Infamous “dance of the millions” in the BPA case

The Andorran Government, the UIFAND and the PwC are the ones who benefit the most from the millions in interests generated from the blocked accounts.

The triad conformed by the Andorran Government, UIFAND and PwC, steadily carries on with the fraud, using the high interests generated from the clients’ blocked funds of the extinct Banco Privado d’Andorra(BPA), today administered by Vall Banc, in order to pay for millions in bills originated during this scandalous case, which started with the flawed auditing process done by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The firm has so far collected around 100 million dollars for the bank’s intervention.

It might be due to this type of profits that the earnings of the discredited firm PwC for audit, tax and consulting services grow 7 per cent every year. Only in 2017, that increase meant a total gross income of 37,7 billion dollars, whereas in the auditing field, their operations grew 6 per cent, amounting to 16 billion dollars, as reported by Bob Moritz, global PwC president.

Only last year, these transactions have allowed PwC 19 acquisitions around the world. It seems like the only way to pay for Antoni Marti’s government’s errors is to retain as long as possible, with false claims, the accounts of hundreds of clients that keep multimillionaire balances, generating enough interests to face the “dance of the millions” being distributed within the triad.

Not caring about creating a bad reputation for themselves and destroying their clients’ trust, since this is a company not committed to transparency (as proven by the last internal audit quality reviews), PwC and its followers are currently accused of prevarication, misappropriation and failure in the safeguard of documents, leading to a claim for damages.

Even after three years of having their accounts blocked -in an attempt to avoid the massive capital flight-, the affected clients who have never committed any offence, are still being targeted by a disproportionate and unjustified investigation.Citizens from all over the world with all types of accounts, continue their fight before the court of Andorra, due to the fact that some were investigated abusively and others were considered fit without further revision, which is a clear discrimination and arbitrariness.

The main BPA shareholders, the Cierco brothers, noticed that the auditing process carried out by PwC meant a cost of “millions of euros”, and that during the analysis process the criteria kept changing and the search became more and more meticulous, causing confusion, combined with the gross bureaucratic incompetence, lack of transparency and covering up of the Andorran financial authorities, such as the State Agency for Resolution of Banking Institutions (AREB), led by Albert Hinojosa Besolí and the Andorran Financial Intelligence Unit (UIFAND), led by CarlesFiñana.

The Ciercos also reported the irregular auditing process performed by PwC to facilitate the creation of Vall Banc and later migration, to the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) and Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Funding Measures.The claim is based on the fact that PwC did not carry out any kind of revision, neither did they create a new client survey (KYC) after receiving the order from the Andorran government.

Yet another proof of PwC’s irresponsibility and dishonesty:on April 19th 2015, the Spanish National Court in Madrid initiated the trial against the 61 partners and former partners of the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, charged with tax fraud against the American company IBM in 2002. The people accused were Miguel Fernández de Pinedo, former president and CEO of the firm, Cesar Rodríguez Ramos and José MaríaTajadura, joint managers of PwC Consulting, who received fines of over 100 million euros.

The number of clients who did not pass the audit performed by PwC on behalf of the Principality’s Government was of 2 thousand 200.Out of these, hundreds were stuck in the migration process of fixed income assets from BPA to Vall Banc, the bridge entity which was sold to the American vulture fund JC Flowers.According to declarations made by a former Bank of Madrid executive, some time after that, 12 out of 16 thousand were suspects in BPA, which was not enough to shut down a bank.

This situation has caused dramatic crisis for some of the affected, even suicide, due to the desperate situation they are going through. Such is the case of the respected Mexican lawyer Pedro Raymundo Salinas Arrambide, who shot himself in the head in March this year in México City, splattered by the BPA case with suspicions of money laundering.