The real criminals are within BPA

Fearing that banking secrecy does not exist in Andorra, nor that one can rely on its banking or on its government, the scandal of the illegal intervention of BPA pave way for a bad precedent, so that in the future, investors around the world will entrust their capitals to entities that are more secure.

Although the status as an offshore Tax Haven disappeared in 2011, when the Government of the Principality of Andorra began to sign bilateral agreements for the exchange of financial information with other countries, this was not sufficient to protect the accounts of thousands of clients. Clients who had entrusted their savings to the now discredited financial entity, whose chapter of terror began with the trial and imprisonment of its general manager, Joan Pau Miquel.

Adding to this, the courts of Andorra have admitted to processing a criminal complaint filed by the Andorran Government led by Antonio Martí, against the former CEO of BPA Joan Pau Miquel – who has been in prison since March 15th of last year for allegedly not having declared paid nearly 15 million euros by the entity.

The actual situation of BPA, according to a report of the audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), is that the bank had 923 clients allegedly suspected of money laundering, which accounts for only 3 per cent of the total and that represents a turnover of about EUR 1 billion, only 19% of the entity. In other words, the intervention was only a Machiavellian strategy that has culminated in an episode of global discredit and repudiation.

The experts reiterate that the report and remark of FinCen in March 2015 “should never have been made and never should BPA have been intervened, because the alleged irregular activity of some few clients of BPA may not extend the suspicion to all”.

The catastrophic scenario that awaits BPA, in the event of losing the filed complaint by hundreds of clients, is the massive abandoning of major investors, due to the shadow of the bad reputation that has already created, and its imminent bankruptcy. The filed complaint also includes the Andorran National Institute of Finance (INAF), the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIFAND) and the State Agency for Resolution of Banking Institutions (AREB).

The swindled clients consider that their interests have not been protected, nor their banking secrecy, and that they have not been guaranteed juridical means to recover their funds and investments, stolen by the BPA administration, despite that the Tax Fraud within the entity was discarded.

“The real criminals are within the banking entity”, has been pointed out by the swindled clients, who all have organized themselves to undertake a ‘crusader battle’ against the mafia of thugs dressed in a suits and ties.

The strategy to complete the largest fraud known in the history of the banking world is to liquidate BPA, after removed from the black list of the United States, once they considered it no longer operates in a way that poses a threat to its financial system. Thereafter immediately, transfer the assets of the clients considered not ‘toxic’, to the new bank (Vall Banc), whose auctioning that was planned for the upcoming weeks, has been postponed.

Finally, the lawyer firm Cremades & Calvo Sotelo that collaborates with the affected clients platform that has filed the complaint, ensures that this journey is due to the malfunction of the public administrations. In this case, those of Andorra, which have left the clients of BPA unprotected and at the mercy of financial mercenaries who all have been worse than the “wolves of Wall Street”.