UIFAND and PwC, a heavy sinister weight blocking legit funds

“Hundreds of clients of the extinct BPA, from all over the world, are still under a disproportionate and unjustified investigation”

Countless of financial analysts suggest the existence of some sort of conspiracy or “silence pact” surrounding the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA) case, which seems to have been a premeditated operation, openly disregarding the collateral damages to clients, investors and the Andorran financial center itself. Everything points to a takeover of the bank and political malpractice which led to the unjustified accusation of money laundering internationally.

More than three years have passed since the entity’s intervention, and still hundreds of accounts remain blocked at Vall Banc, under disproportionate and groundless investigations, which is nothing but unacceptable to the affected, justifiably so. Exclusive details from this case have shown the alleged meddling of the Principality’s Executive Body over the institutions responsible for overseeing the operations of the extinct BPA, namely the Andorran National Institute of Finances (INAF), led byRamón López, the Andorran Financial Intelligence Unit (UIFAND), led by CarlesFiñana, and the Andorran State Agency for Resolution of Banking Institutions (AREB), led by Albert Hinojosa Besolí.

Based on the misleading reports of the discredited firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the UIFAND, requested to declare the blocked clients as unfit, without any control or analysis. This was not the case with the accounts that other bank entities had with BPA and those from the people related both with Executive and public entities of the country, as well as the banks that were considered to be exempt from inspection.

The Cierco family, main shareholders at BPA, had already reported the irregular auditing process that PwC performed to facilitate the creation of Vall Banc and expropriate them from the BPA, to the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) and Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Funding Measures.

The main shareholders of the intervened bank have accused Carles Fariña of having used privileged information, disclosed secrets, omitted his duty of persecuting felonies, malversation, not protecting the ones involved in the process, coercion and threat. They claim the government threw the BPA under the bus, affected by this type of malpractice, which the FinCEN (organism that fights international money laundering and depends on the Treasury of the United States) considered as illegal, but were legal at that moment in the country.

There is reason to believe that the boss at UIFAND supplied information about events affecting the BPA, or received details or elements of what was being set up and that could have affected the bank that afterwards was intervened. If Fiñana did supply some kind of information within certain groups, then he committed a felony, and a serious one, if you consider that the fall of the BPA shook the credibility of the entire Andorran financial center.

Fiñana allegedly received privileged information that the FinCEN was working on the document that would lead to the bank’s downfall: an accusatory letter, withdrawn a year later, due to lack of evidence. In other words, he was aware of the events about to unfold. After the decision that the FinCEN made in 2015, of sanctioning the Andorran bank, following its public intervention and liquidation, Fiñana confessed that the entity had been under investigation since 2010, in spite of a background with two good practices certificates from years before.

In addition to this, there is a letter from the United States’ embassy’s advisor of economic affairs, Anton K. Smith, who suggests that it was the negligence of the Andorran Government which led to the crisis within the entire country’s banking system, according to an email declassified by the US Department of State.

Because the Andorran authorities ignored the warnings of the American organisms, the FinCEN decided to use the smallest bank in the country (BPA) as an example for the whole system, Smith admitted in April 2015. All of this reveals that the minister of finances, Jordi Cinca, did not tell the truth when the case broke out, declaring that it would be an “exceptional and transitory” situation. The thing is that Andorra knew all the details, since they got them through official channels.

It is a fact that the BPA case will mark a complicated end for the Andorran presidential period, for Antoni Martí; and while that time arrives, the dark zones surrounding downfall of the BPA will have partially dissipated, considering the fact that some clients are investigated almost abusively and others (the bank accounts of the Principality’s Government and all of the country’s public institutions) were declared fit without any inspection. This poses an obvious discrimination and arbitrariness by the Andorran authorities.