The Andorran Justice has admitted the extension of the lawsuit against the former President of the Government Mariano Rajoy, and his Ministers of Economy and Interior, Cristóbal Montoro and Jorge Fernández Díaz, for the action against the Private Bank of Andorra (BPA) and its Spanish branch, the Bank of Madrid.

The investigating judge Stéphanie Garcia has already sent the corresponding rogatory commissions to the Spanish authorities to transfer the complaints filed by the Cierco family, owner of the financial entities, and summons the former high-ranking PP officials to appear in the case with lawyers . The legal action of the Cierco also extends to the former Secretary of State for the Interior Francisco Martínez and the former Director General of the Police Ignacio Cosidó, among others.

The complainants attribute to Rajoy and Montoro a crime of false documentation for having “sent false information to FinCEN (Finance Crime Enforcement Network, dependent on the US Treasury Department). Specifically, for having sent a communication with the Andorran bank “which precipitated their intervention and liquidation on March 10, 2015”. They are also accused of a crime against constitutional bodies.

In this case “for having intimidated the Andorran head of government, Antoni Martí, and at least three ministers with whom they met during the official visit that took place in the Principality on January 8” of the same year of the intervention. The reason for the meeting, always according to the complaint instructed by the Andorran Justice, was that “they intervened and liquidated the BPA with the information they had received from the US.” In the case of Fernández Díaz and his subordinates, the Cierco family attributes “coercion, threats, extortion and blackmail” to them.

It should be remembered that the Spanish Justice ended up shelving the legal case for money laundering that led to the intervention of the Bank of Madrid and that the Money Laundering Service (Sepblac) itself exonerated the financial entities of having laundered money of illicit origin. For this reason, and in parallel to the lawsuit filed in Andorra against the former officials of the Spanish Government, the Cierco family claims 141 million from the State for having caused the fall of Banco de Madrid and, by extension, the disappearance of the Andorran parent company.

The judicial procedure in Andorra began in 2016 and was initially based on the operation carried out by the Spanish Police to obtain the accounts that the Pujol family was hiding in Andorra. The former CEO of the bank Joan Pau Miquel delivered a recording in which the then Interior Attaché in Andorra, Celestino Barroso, summoned him to deliver the information if they did not want the bank to be intervened. For this, he indicated that he should meet in Madrid with Commissioner Marcelino Martín Blas, with whom he finally met at the Hotel Villa Magna. According to Miquel’s account, this former high-ranking police officer pressured him to hand over all the information he had on undeclared accounts of Catalan independence leaders. Martín Blas has already appeared before the Andorran Justice by videoconference and denied the facts.

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