The former vice president of the Government Rodrigo Rato will sit on the bench of the Provincial Court of Madrid starting next December 12, when the oral trial will begin to clarify the origin of his fortune.
However, we will have to wait until January 9, 2024 for the interrogation of the accused to begin, which will likely last until February 9, according to the calendar released this Wednesday by the Provincial Court of Madrid.
Including testimonial, expert, documentary evidence and conclusions, the trial, the third that Rato faces after the black cards and Bankia's IPO, will last until May 23, 2024.
The seventh section of the Provincial Court will be in charge of judging Rato, more than a year after the Investigative Court number 31 of Madrid agreed to send him the proceedings of the case for prosecution, after seven years of investigation of a procedure in the that more than 70,000 documents were accumulated.
The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) highlighted at the time that, for this reason, Rato and 16 others investigated for the crimes of money laundering, corruption between individuals and tax crime would sit on the bench.
The Provincial Court of Madrid will judge Rato as the alleged perpetrator of eleven crimes against the Public Treasury between the years 2005 and 2015, one crime of money laundering and another of corruption between individuals in the granting of Bankia advertising campaigns to the Zenith agencies. and Publicis during his time at the head of the entity.
The Prosecutor's Office claimed in its letter to have identified unjustified increases in assets between 2005 and 2015 for a total amount of 15.6 million euros, in addition to income from movable capital abroad that was also not declared to the Treasury, and 7.4 million defrauded from the Tax agency.
To this last figure we would have to add the taxation of professional services through their companies, which would bring the defrauded fees to 8.5 million euros.
He also saw "rational indications" that the former minister, while president of Bankia, improperly charged commissions for the entity's advertising contracts with Publicis and Zenith, related to the merger and IPO, which would have been derived to various companies achieving "blurring the origin of money."
Along with Rato, the former director of several companies linked to Rato, Miguel Ángel Montero, and the former general secretary of Telefónica Ramiro Sánchez de Lerín, among others, were also accused of tax crimes.
Santiago Alarcó, Rato's former brother-in-law, is also accused of the crime of money laundering; while in corruption between individuals there is José Manuel Fernández Norniella, former "right hand" of the former minister, or his former secretary, Teresa Arellano.
