Ex-Advisors of BBVA felt spied on by Francisco González

 Ex-Advisors of BBVA felt spied on by Francisco González 

The bank paid escort services even after leaving the entity and believe that they also served to control them

  Several ex-advisors of BBVA felt spied and watched for several years after leaving the governing body of the financial institution, although they never reported it. In some cases there was even evidence, in other mere suspicions and many conjectures about what could be hidden behind. Now, revealed the hiring for 14 years of former Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo by the bank and the alleged espionage work directly commissioned by its president, Francisco González, the suspicions have become conviction.

  This has been reported to EL CORREO by some of the ex-advisors of the entity who resigned -in truth, it must be said that they were dismissed or forced to resign- in 2002, after the existence of assets of the former BBV was discovered that had remained out of the balance sheet of the entity, managed through companies based in the island of Jersey. An issue that had already led to the end of 2001 the resignation of the then co-president of the bank, Emilio Ybarra, and the CEO, Pedro Luis Uriarte.

Recorded conversations
"For several years I had absolute certainty that my phones were controlled, as well as those of my closest relatives. We all noticed strange things, like the recorded repetition of the conversation you had just had, when I picked up the phone again, "says a former bank counselor at the time.

The tension between that group of counselors from the BBV and Francisco González was more than evident. The outpouring of that parallel operation that the entity had had for decades also left open the opening of pension funds on behalf of the 22 directors that came from the Basque bank, formalized just before the merger with Argentaria and for a joint amount of 19.3 million euros. The money came from the accounts of Jersey and everything pointed to it being a last compensation to the directors, given that from that moment and after the merger their rewards would be significantly reduced in the new board.

Although seen from a historical perspective that compensation - the average was less than 900,000 euros per counselor - must be qualified as 'marginal' compared to the compensation paid by the bank in the last decade to some of its senior positions, the truth is that It was the lever on which Francisco González leaned to make a real sweep in the dome of the corporation. From that moment on, the directors who came from Argentaria became the majority and González was able to start managing the bank without obstacles or opposition.

"I always suspected that the escorts were passing information to the bank. Where I was going, who I met with, what I said in his presence ... ", points out another ex-adviser of the bank. Francisco González himself, they say, had "insisted" that the financial institution pay the expenses of the escort of the already ex-advisers, despite the circumstances in which they had left the bank and the existing tension.

Although at that time almost everyone understood it as a "logical gesture", given that many of them maintained their habitual residence in the Basque Country and their public notoriety had placed them in the center of the target of the extortion of the terrorist band ETA "Regardless of their work as escorts and that they were really nice people, and also that their main mission was to protect me, I always had the idea that what they saw was going to be known by Francisco González", adds the ex-counselor.