The judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz has agreed to archive the investigation into the capital increase of Banco Popular in 2012 following the criteria of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which considered that it “was carried out in accordance with current legislation and was subject to controls relevant”.
In an order this Thursday, reported by Europa Press, the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 5 dismisses the case as “the perpetration” of the crimes of investor fraud or non-compliance with information duties in which “the perpetration of the crimes was not duly justified was not duly justified.” I had been investigating since June of last year.
The magistrate endorses the conclusions of the prosecutor Belén Dorremochea, who last week sent a letter to the Court in which she requested that the case be archived, alluding to a key document: the expert report from the Bank of Spain that described the operation as a “success.” ” and that he maintained that the expansion represented “a good investment regardless of the profitability obtained by each of the shareholders.”
Along these lines, Anticorruption pointed out that the operation “occurred in a context of serious global economic crisis that forced the different states to adopt measures to alleviate the situation, which in the case of Spain consisted of implementing strict measures in the banking sector.” .
In the case of Popular, the prosecutor explained, “it was calculated that they had to obtain 3,223 million euros of additional own resources and the bank decided to comply with the requirements through its own means without resorting to public aid, opting to carry out a capital increase in 2012 to meet the objectives required at the state level”.
