AMP. The Supreme Court confirms the acquittal of Rato and 33 others accused of Bankia's IPO

Dismisses the two appeals that were filed against the ruling of the National High Court

MADRID, 28 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Supreme Court has ratified the acquittal of the 34 defendants in the Bankia IPO trial, including the entity's former president and former director general of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Rodrigo Rato, for crimes of fraud against investors and false accounting.

In a sentence, in which Europa Press has had access, the High Court has dismissed the only two appeals that were filed against the decision that the National Court adopted in September 2020. Specifically, it has rejected the arguments of Bochner España SL and of the Spanish Association of Minority Shareholders of Listed Companies (AEMEC).

The initial sentence ensured that there was not a single piece of information that could lead to harboring even the mere well-founded belief that the accused had abandoned their functions. The Supreme Court magistrates have confirmed these conclusions, so the acquittal of the 34 defendants -including José Luis Olivas, José Manuel Fernández Norniella, Ildefonso Sánchez Barcoj and Francisco Celma- has become final.

The Criminal Chamber has ensured that "no blatant error is noted, nor apodictic or absurd arguments" that could lead the Supreme Court to annul the decision of the National Court, as requested by the appellants.

In 178 pages, the High Court has reviewed the arguments of the appellants and has indicated, among other issues, that the deliberation, voting and ruling of the sentence that acquitted Rato and the rest of the accused is correct.

In addition, it has rejected that the resolution of the National Court was not sufficiently motivated or that there was an error in the assessment of the evidence that was practiced during the trial.

The magistrates have insisted that their work is not about assessing what would have been the most "suitable or correct" sentence, but rather "verifying" that the decision adopted by the National High Court "has not violated the right to effective judicial protection of the accusations", something that --in his opinion-- has not happened.

Thus, the Supreme Court has ratified the ruling that established that the IPO had the approval of all supervisors and that the brochure contained "broad and accurate" financial and non-financial information.

The National High Court highlighted that in the trial only generic attitudes of the accused were exposed and not specific acts, so that what corresponded was to acquit the accused.

For that court, it was "clearly evident" that the process that culminated in Bankia's IPO was "intensely supervised" with success by the Bank of Spain, the CNMV, the Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring (FROB) and the European Banking Authority (EBA), ultimately counting on the approval of all institutions.

As the judges pointed out in 2020, both the decision to debut in the market, and the determination to do so with the double bank structure, were resolutions entirely contemplated by the Bank of Spain, which also approved them after calibrating the advantages and disadvantages that these decisions entailed.

The National Court concluded that the brochure contained "wide and accurate" financial and non-financial information "more than sufficient" for wholesale and retail investors to form a reasoned opinion on the value of the company that was being offered.

The court endorsed the statements of the prosecutor, Carmen Launa, who said that the financial information "cannot be materially classified as false to the extent that it did not violate the regulations in force at the time and complied with the requirements of the regulator, which came to expressly authorize some accounting decisions, although they did not contribute to the entity's true and fair view".

Regarding the non-financial information subscribed, the original sentence indicates that up to 36 risks were described to the investment in Bankia shares that were highlighted in the first point of the summary of its content, whose description was "exhaustive, clear and that anyone would understand ".