The Economic Scandal of the BPA remains alive more than ever…

The economic scandal of the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA) is still alive, more than ever, even if the government wants to ‘pass to the next chapter’ by avoiding to continue talking about the case. The reality is that there is such mistrust, that the Andorran banking managers do not know how to face the massive demands of the clients who have had their savings transferred from BPA to the new financial institution Vall Banc. In addition, there are still thousands who have not been transferred – and who want to withdraw the funds for security reasons and for the fear of losing their capitals.

A larger movement of people than usual has overwhelmed the offices of the new entity in these last days, with queues, mainly by foreigners, who seek to withdraw as much as possible of available deposits. Taking into account that in the first transfer, 92% of the clients were migrated to the new bank from the BPA – an entity that unsuccessfully seeks to overcome the international scandal for defrauding thousands of savers, having always unfulfilled the promise of transferring the capital to Vall Banc and return the funds to the affected investors.

In the last transfer, only 20% was deposited from the total liquidation with a maximum of 25 thousand euros and a minimum of 15 thousand euros in withdrawals. The rest of the money has inexplicably not been made available to the client. What is unacceptable is that clients from the first transfer can now access 100 percent of their balances with the restrictions now having finished, but the rest of the accounts remain “frozen” and without giving the clients any opportunity to recover their savings that supposedly are in Vall Banc. We recall that in the first transfer of clients, they only included Andorran clients with minimum savings.

Bank executives and authorities of the Andorran Government have always lied; despite the fact that clients have provided all of the requested information when required to by the responsible auditors of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and all the documentation has been reviewed and classified, the new Vall Banc officials negligently still do not hand out any answers.

At the same time, even though new clients have been identified as transferable and ‘freed’ by the reviewing process, the State Agency for Resolution of Banking Institutions (AREB) and key managers of Vall Banc have flatly refused to do so. Up until now, 7% of BPA clients have still not been transferred to Vall Banc, after having been validated with the required information, due to negligence.

More like a rural saving bank than a bank with an international profile, Vall Banc, the company that now ward the vulture fund J.C. Flowers, is made up by a staff of 140 employees out of 235 that were available with the Banca Privada d’Andorra at the time of its intervention, March 10 of 2015. Out of these, only a dozen was allocated to finish working with the transfer of products to the new company.

This is the only way in understanding why the inefficiency and bureaucracy has persisted during almost two years that this process has lasted, which has always smelled like a scam. Meanwhile the Vall Banc clients remain without access to their savings in USD and without being able to sell any stock investments. This is in addition to the limitations in availability of their deposits, which is forbidding its customers to dispose of more than 250 thousand euros in cash before the end of the year and to transfer money to countries out of the OECD.

Despite the fact that Vall Banc – the good assets segregated from BPA – has already been sold to the vulture fund J.C. Flowers, still more than 2 thousand clients of all types have remained in a legal limbo and without operating margin. Several of those affected are already demanding for responsibility and damages for these acts.

The situation could worsen as of first of January 2017, when Andorra must provide the information for the accounts of all foreign customers of the bank to the corresponding states tax authorities.  The emergence of Andorra in the previous list of tax havens put pressure on the General Council to amend the draft law to be adopted before December 31. In addition to apply all of the automatic exchange of information from next year without the exception for balances of less than one million euros (according to the global policy the date is set to the January 1 of 2019, if that account balance amount is not reached). There is also the possibility that the Principality will leave outside of the audit those accounts that do not exceed 45 thousand euros, if held in state bonds, which would be a blatant fiscal blackmail according to the global financial regulations.

The management and the supposed leadership current bank officials are exercising, amongst others Jaume Casals Colom and Alexandre Saura Alonso, does nothing to help the companies or the government of Andorra. In discredit to the Andorran banking , due to the ineptitude and lack of capacity of these characters who have become experts in forging delaying tactics that hinder the process of the clients to get their money back.