SATA Bank unleashes nightmare in Malta

Antoni Martí conspired with vulture bankers to embezzle and plunge the Banca Privada d’Andorra.

The biggest historical error of the Andorran government was to collaborate with Spain and the United States to sink the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), even though today it has been demonstrated that the justice of the Principality proved nothing that was accused and pointed out. The only thing that was achieved was that the rest of the banks and the financial sector of the country as a whole, remain mortally wounded before the international community and a lost clientele.

Despite the vast resources that Andorran bankers have allocated to improve their image in international public opinion, neither the efforts of the Pyrenean governmenthave managed to reverse this unfortunate history. Justice is still investigating, but without finding responsible for banking practices that have always been tolerated by their legislation and that now claim to be criminalized.

It is a fact that the Machiavellian complicity of the ruinous and servile Andorran Executive in the intervention of the BPA after the note made by FinCEN caused the loss of the main condition of any credit institution: credibility and security in its own place.

The administration led by Antoni Martí, could not defend its own interests without damaging the country’s economy, which puts in doubt its continuity in front of a government sold at the minimum pressure. Together with his finance minister, Jordi Cinca, they will have to explain thoroughly the mess that has been pointed out, they are the direct executors.

Precisely, the Cierco brothers, majority shareholders of BPA until its nationalization, filed an appeal with the bodies of the Council of Europe responsible for the fight against corruption, considering that the process of analysis of bank accounts carried out by the infamous auditing company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was “arbitrary” and “discriminatory”. Because the process of transferring customers and accounts have resulted in an unfair situation in which there are hundreds of affected customers and who to date cannot dispose of their assets. They agree that everything that happened tothe bank was a political pressure to which the Martí government gave way.

This is compounded by a lawsuit filed in the United States to obtain information about the links between the JC Flowers vulture fund, the entity that was finally awarded the former Andorran bank when it was renamed Vall Banc, and the convertible bonds issued by the entity. They turned out to be a real fiasco.

The lawsuit, which also involves Joan Pau Miquel, former CEO of the entity, is to claim data to demonstrate a thesis based on other data in relation to litigation in another country. The suspicion of the brothers Higini and Ramón Cierco, is that Vall Banc exchanged the debt that it generated with BPA for the transfer of assets with convertible bonds, known as CoCo’s. These bonds were issued by the bank for a value of 70 million euros. It was a way to comply with the solvency requirements imposed by the monetary authorities.

However, the modification of the solvency criteria, the fall in interest rates and the fact that Vall Banc did not pay the holders, caused the plummeting of its value, which opened the doors to JC Flowers to buy the bank for the laughable amount of 12.8 million.

The petition to the US authorities is related to the lawsuit filed in Andorra against the Andorran State, the State Agency for Resolution of Banking Institutions (AREB), headed by Albert Hinojosa Besolí, and the Andorran National Institute of Finance (INAF), headed by Ramón Lopez. Because the creation of the CoCo’s was part of a strategy to empty the bank for the benefit of the vulture fund.