Plot thesis surrounding the BPA case grows stronger

“The lies and the deception are making the Andorran Government pay”

The question “Who killed the Banca Privada d’Andorra?”; was it the previous managers of the bank or was it the Government presided by Antoni Martí. It is something which still resonates within the financial spheres and that has its precedent in the now famous Bucarets reunion, held in April 2014, between the anti-corruption prosecutors José Grinda and Fernando Bermejo, and the general director of the Andorran Financial Intelligence Unit (UIFAND), CarlesFiñana, where BPA’s death sentencewas supposedly signed.

Three and a half years after that infamous March 10, 2015, the once tax haven is no longer trustworthy nor transparent toforeign investment.The lies and deception are making them pay.The suspicion that it was all a conspiracy from the American imperialism, in the eyes of the unclean auditing process performed by the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) by request of the Principality’s Government, is almost assured after uncovering several dubious financial operations between corrupt politicians and policemen.

Oddly enough, a former BPA attorney, now on the government’s payroll, represented last February the accusation before the Andorran Constitutional Court, on behalf of the Executive, against 25 directors and managers of accounts from the extinct bank entity, charged with alleged money laundering.Furthermore, around twenty of the accused declared themselves collateral victims of interests originated outside the Andorran State, for the only attacked entity was BPA, where Jordi Pujol Soley’s family allegedly has or had accounts.

Several civilian actors agree that BPA’s fall down came about because of the great bureaucraticincompetence, lack of transparency and covering up by Andorran financial authorities, also because of participants and partners, such as the State Agency for Resolution of Banking Institutions (AREB) and the UIFAND, who gave in to petty interestsfrom the power groups.

More than 2 thousand clients did not pass the PwC auditing process requested by the Principality’s Government. The firm received around 100 million dollars for it, which has earned them a bad reputation and losing the trust of their clients.In light of such irregularities, hundreds of savers 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.

Many investors and small shareholders are still claiming to the former bank’s group the recovery of their lost money and the corresponding compensation for the damages caused after the intervention and liquidation of the entity.Meanwhile the victims’ lawyers are demanding an investigation to be opened in order to determine if there was an illegal course of action against the BPA in procedural terms.

As of this moment, there are still no proof of them committing any type of crime – initially, there was a lot of contradictive information in the FinCEN’s note-, which is why the affected clients, from all around the world, who are still being subject to a repressive and abusive investigation, will keep on giving their best fight in the courts.

Reacting to what they consider a deficient resolution process filled with irregularities, the Cierco brothers, Higini and Ramon, major shareholders of the extinct BPA, recently demanded the European authorities to revise the “flawed transposition” made by Andorra, in regards to the community directive addressing the restructuring and resolution of financial entities, which led to the creation of the so called “BPA law”, through which the bank got intervened.