The public financial organizations dependent on the Generalitat of Catalonia -Institut Català de Finances (ICF) and Avalis- plus a group of financial entities including CaixaBank and BBVA were allegedly defrauded in the granting of guarantees and extraordinary credits during the years 2020 and 2021 in the midst of the covid crisis. The process, which has reached the courts in Barcelona, is for an amount of more than ten million euros, explained sources consulted.
From ICF they declare that "in January 2021 the ICF discovered possible irregularities in a client's operations, specifically a possible falsification in some of the documentation presented by the risk analysis." After the detection of the aforementioned irregularities, in February of that same year the ICF filed a complaint with the Central Fraud Unit of the Mossos d'Esquadra for the alleged crime of falsification of a public document in conjunction with a crime of fraud.
In parallel, several financial entities appeared to have been harmed in the case. Among them are CaixaBank and BBVA, explained sources consulted who detailed that there may be more banks affected by the cause.
Sources familiar with the case said that the process was temporarily dismissed because the accused person could not be located. But in recent months the case was reopened once the main accused, who is currently in provisional prison, was located, the same sources explained. The Barcelona lawyer Álex Garberí is the defense of the accused although he declined to comment yesterday.
The judicial case includes a report from the Tax Agency within the framework of the investigations in which it warns of a lack of control and laxity in the granting of financial operations, as published by El Periódico. In the aforementioned report, of fifty pages, the Spanish Treasury cites a series of possible crimes allegedly committed by the accused with fraud practices and document falsification.
In the months that the judicialized events occurred, credit institutions gave billions of loans guaranteed by public administrations in record time to facilitate liquidity for companies, said sources consulted. In some cases, employees worked from home and managed large amounts of documentation. In fact, when the allegedly criminal events occurred, mobility restrictions were maintained due to the pandemic. The sources consulted explain that the operation that is now being analyzed in court was carried out through a network of several companies.
In those months, the central government made ICO guarantees available so that the credit granted by conventional banking entities could flow. In Catalonia, guarantees were also made available to companies through Avalis and credits through the ICF to overcome the problems in companies derived from covid.
ICF sources specified that “work is being done – through judicial means – to recover all of the amounts disbursed.” Information about the case has emerged after the secrecy of the summary was lifted.
