The National Court has rejected the dismissal of the case investigating the relationship of the former president of BBVA Francisco González with the former commissioner Villarejo, understanding, like the investigating judge, Manuel García Castellón, that the file is not appropriate at the present procedural moment. In an order dated this Friday to which EFE has had access, the criminal court rejects the dismissal and agrees with the judge, who on May 25 rejected the declaration of prescription that Francisco González had requested.
The former president of BBVA argued that the alleged commission dates back to 2004 and 2005, so the facts would be statute-barred, even if the order initiating the case, December 2018, was taken into account, but García Castellón seemed that “it is not possible.” exclude at this procedural moment the existence of a continuing crime.”
IT IS ABOUT THE INVESTIGATIONS, THE INSTRUCTION OF WHICH HAS BEEN EXTENDER UNTIL JANUARY 2024, REGARDING THE SUPPORT OF THE BANK TO CENCULATA TO EX-COMMISSIONER José Manue Villarejo, TO FIND OUT WHO WAS BEHIND THE ATTEMPT TO TAKE A Stake IN bbva port de Sacyr at the end of 2004. In its order, the criminal court addresses what was stated in May by the judge, who stated that “the existence of a continuing crime cannot be excluded at this procedural moment.”
The commissioning dynamics of the Cenyt group, García Castellón pointed out, “was based, precisely, on periodic, successive hiring, and on a kind of customer loyalty”, with “a plurality of orders that have been developed over time.” There is “a substantial identity in their hiring, from which it flows that there is no way to attend to a kind of total disconnection between the merited assignments,” the order added.
There is no agreement on the date that should be taken into account as the beginning of the facts investigated, an issue “debated and discussed”, so “there is no reason to declare the prescription interested by the applicant,” he added. The Chamber also refers to what was stated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which considers that since the continued crime of bribery is not statute-barred, “none of the infractions related to it are statute-barred”; The 10-year statute of limitations “would not apply, since there is a continuing crime of bribery that would extend to the hiring of the year 2010.”
Judge García Castellón investigates the “Trap” operation, the ninth separate piece of the “Villarejo case” that deals with the alleged espionage services to politicians, businessmen and journalists that the bank would have commissioned from the former commissioner since 2004, when the construction company S acyr started , unsuccessfully, a movement to try to take control of the entity. In mid-2019, the judge agreed to charge both BBVA and its former president Francisco González in a case in which other former directors of the bank were already under investigation, such as the bank’s former Risk Director Antonio Béjar or the former security chief Julio. Corrochano.
