The clash between BBVA and the judge and prosecutors investigating the Villarejo case grows as the end of the investigation approaches, now definitively set for the month of January. This Friday he took another step, with the entity accusing the investigating magistrate and Anti-Corruption of coercion contrary to his right to defense.
BBVA, accused in the case, had been urgently summoned to clarify whether it authorized the lawyers who had addressed the internal investigation of the case to answer the questions of the instructor and the Public Ministry. And also to indicate if she was willing to provide more documentation about those investigations within the bank regarding the hiring of retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo.
The bank’s representative has responded in court that these requests are out of place, both because of the moment in which they occur and because of their content.
The director of BBVA Legal Services, Adolfo Fraguas, was the one who spoke on behalf of the entity and concluded with “we cannot access what was requested.”
“We must emphasize that in no case can collaboration mean that the investigated legal entity is required to relieve its lawyers of the duty of secrecy, nor to renounce the right to communicate with its lawyers or their lawyers with their technical assistants, requiring them to provide the communications between them or the product of their work,” said Fraguas.
“Authorized doctrine,” he continued, “considers that it is not admissible that, as a condition of collaboration, such resignations be required of the legal entity under investigation, as this may entail a ‘significant degree of coercion that is difficult to admissible.’ on the yardstick of collaboration.
The response comes after Judge Manuel García Castellón and prosecutors Miguel Serrano and Alejandro Cabaleiro accused the bank of inconsistency, for publicly stating that it was collaborating in the investigation and, however, preventing its lawyers from testifying and resisting handing over all the documents. requested inmates.
“One cannot speak of collaboration when one chooses not to testify. There is nothing less collaborative than refusing to testify, even though this refusal is indisputably protected by the right of defense,” the judge said in Tuesday’s resolution in which he cited back to the entity.
In his opinion, the bank’s actions “reveal an obvious contradiction between what is alleged and what is done. It is legitimate to take advantage of the right not to declare, but doing so based on the duty of professional secrecy is inconsistent with the renunciation of that right by its holder, that is, the legal entity under investigation that claims to want to collaborate with Justice.”
BBVA’s response begins by maintaining that the judge could not even make these requests for help, since it would contravene the recent decision of the Chamber reviewing the investigation of the case to close the practice of new proceedings.
“This appearance is in itself an investigative procedure agreed upon ex novo and, therefore, contravenes the strict ruling of the Order of the Third Section of the Criminal Chamber,” BBVA said.
In that order, the court upheld the bank’s request to deny new extensions to the investigation, also annulling the last agreed procedures, including the witness statement of the president of BBVA, Carlos Torres, whose explanations to the judge and the prosecutors could not be Taken into account.
When the last extension of the investigation ends, the investigating judge will have to decide who to sit on the bench for BBVA’s hiring of Villarejo when he was an active commissioner. In addition to the entity itself, the bank’s former head of Security, several directors and former president Francisco González are accused in the case.