The judges use the Bankia case to give the reason to the affected shareholders of the Popular

The judges use the Bankia case to give the reason to the affected shareholders of the Popular

Several rulings condemn the bank because the brochure of the extension reflected erroneous accounts and are supported, at the same time, in the file of the CNMV

   Popular shareholders who attended the 2016 capital increase are checking how a part of the judges issue judgments favorable to their interests. They do this because they believe that, when they invested, the bank had presented some accounts with "an image of solvency that did not fit the reality". And to back up their verdicts, magistrates increasingly resort to the ruling of the Supreme Court that ordered Bankia to return the money invested by citizens in the 2011 IPO for the same reason: the "serious inaccuracies" that It contained the public offering subscription prospectus launched by the entity then chaired by Rodrigo Rato.

   Many of the demands of Popular shareholders affected by the capital increase - 2,500 million were issued when the bank already showed signs of weakness - are still in the courts of first instance or Provincial Courts. It is only the first step of a journey that can reach the High Court if the Santander -the bank that acquired Popular in mid-2017 after its resolution- resorts to them, as it is doing. But part of the sentences so far issued make explicit references to what happened with Bankia. They do so with the argument that "the dissemination of the brochure that does not reflect the true patrimonial situation of the bank (Popular) prevents the investor from overcoming the error, which thus becomes excusable."

Sentences such as that issued in January by the Provincial Court of Cáceres condemned the Popular to return 30,672 euros to two customers of the bank that attended the expansion. The resolution states that "the mechanisms used to hide their serious economic situation" led them to buy shares "and be part of a solvent entity, when it really had significant losses, to the point that it was resolved and sold for one euro".

In other judgments that this newspaper has had access to, it is stated that "it is not true that the situation of serious losses occurred on the dates following the extension or that its cause was supervening circumstances", two of the arguments of Ángel Ron, ex-president of the Popular in the stage of the extension and until February of 2017. They are the same expressed in his moment around the jump to the parquet of Bankia. Precisely today resumes the trial for this IPO in which Rodrigo Rato is accused of swindling investors.

When the Supreme Court ruled against Bankia in January 2016, the bank was forced to establish a mechanism to return the entire investment to the retailers that had bought the group's shares. In this the entity left 1,847 million euros to compensate 225,000 shareholders. The strategy of Santander has gone by issuing loyalty bonds to which 80% of those affected received in the framework of the capital increase of 2016, when He was not his owner yet.

Some "inaccurate" accounts

Of the remaining shareholders, one party preferred to file lawsuits in the courts where explicit references are given to the Bankia case to argue its ruling in favor of the shareholders. The lawyer Fernando Zunzunegui explains that "judges understand that you can not go from many benefits to many losses in such a short space of time", in reference to the reformulation of Popular accounts, which went from earning 94 million to be left more than 3.500millones . "It is the argument of notoriety", clarifies this lawyer, when referring to the fact of justifying this radical change.

For his part, José Luis Castro, Rúa Abogados, explains that "many cases are similar to Bankia, at least from the legal point of view." He argues that "they acquired shares mediating false economic information". From this firm they argue that the entity "did not provide a faithful image since at least the year 2016".

In the foundations that are exposed the judges also include the investigation launched by the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) last October for having provided "inaccurate data" or "untruthful" that Popular included in the financial information referred to the supervisor three years ago. This is a disciplinary action for very serious infringement directed against both the entity and its ex-president Ángel Ron and other members of its leadership.

In this case, the magistrates maintain that if the CNMV itself has taken this step forward to determine possible liabilities for the alleged falsification of the accounts, it is one more reason to support the position of a part of the investors affected by that operation to which customers, employees and minority shareholders attended and whose demands continue to be resolved in the courts.