Today we woke up to the news that Mario Conde has been arrested for having repatriated in the last months, money from Switzerland that during the 80s and 90s he looted from the bank of which he was director. In addition to the arrest of the former director of Banesto bank, more people have also been arrested, including their children.
What exactly happened?
Today Monday, we have all woken up with himthe news that Mario Conde has been arrested since he has been repatriating money from Switzerland that he stole back when he was still president of the bank. The dates range from the late 80s to the early 90s and it is already known that in a few months, the banker has managed to repatriate at least 10 million euros.
At this moment, an operation is being carried out in which records in the personal homes of Mario Conde and there are also monitoring of some companies that were built by him within the Spanish territory.
These companies are the ones that the banker used to launder money that little by little he was returning to Spain and which he appropriated more than 10 years ago.
There are more detainees among them relatives
Remember that in addition to the arrest of Mario CondeIt is also known that his two children have been arrested and some people close to his circle. Alexandra Count, along with the rest of the detainees, are accused of helping Mario to repatriate large sums of money not only from Switzerland, but also from the United Kingdom. The police have learned that they had already managed to spend more than 10 million euros.
Said operation against Mario Conde is based on crimes of money laundering and crimes against public finances and is in charge of Santiago Pedraz, judge of the national court. In addition, all companies that are in the name of third parties that were used to repatriate the amount of money of more than 10 million euros will be investigated. Repatriation was done through loans or capital increases, as well as large amounts of cash income.
It's been more than 11 years since Mario Conde left prison after serving more than 19 years in prison that were put in 2002 for crimes of undue expropriation in addition to various crimes of fraud and falsification of documents.
Back then Mario Conde left Banesco at the bank Of which he was director, a debt of 2.700 million euros, which caused the entity to be rescued in 1993.
During that trial, Mario Conde never said where the money was and only knew the destination of 3.6 million euros that were diverted to an account in Switzerland through his own Argentia trust company.
How he brought the money to Spain
The banker was using a technique very similar to the one he used to withdraw money from Spain in his day and that gave him the opportunity to return more than 10 million dollars in less than 2 years that he had spent money weekly.
For Banco Banesto, the embezzlement and fraud of Mario Conde It was what made that years later, the Santander bank could absorb the entire entity, since it not only embezzled the bank's coffers, but also several shareholders.
All coldly calculated
The first news we have about the case is based on how the money was passed and the tangle that was woven between Spanish and foreign companies. Much of the money that was managed to spend was made through credits never returned and money remittances that were sent from foreign countries. This, he was able to carry out Mario Conde with the help of his children who served as front men. The anti-corruption prosecutor's office has been suspicious for a long time and I wait patiently until I have all the conclusions of the money that periodically moved in all its companies. It is 99% believed that this money is the same that he stole from Banesto's coffers, since most of the money that was repatriated comes from Switzerland.
The detention
Until last night, Mario Conde was still a free man. He spent a few days in Seville in order to enjoy the April fair and just last night he returned to Madrid to attend to business and that was where he was stopped. This same Wednesday, a statement will be taken.
In his last arrest, Mario Conde had many benefits that reduced his sentence and the time he was in prison he made some money refunds; However, the amount that he returned is very far from the amount that he had stolen, since of the 12 million that he had to return, only 1.5 million were received, which he was pouring out while he was in prison, which made his sentence go away. reducing. However, once the Former banker got out of jail He never gave more money than he owed again.
However, Mario Conde always said that the money that had disappeared from Banesto's accounts and it turned up in switzerland it wasn't his and he never had anything to do with it. He said that it was all a hoax and that he was completely innocent of all the charges and that it was actually a strategy of the PSOE government that wanted to stop him due to his great career in finance; however, 20 years later, money appears in their societies.
A small cosmetics company
According to police sources, the largest amount of money was passed through a small cosmetics and household goods factory that went completely unnoticed in Torreón and of which his daughter was the CEO.
The crime officers who are currently investigating the case they have traced all the money from switzerland For months and almost all movements have led them to this factory that, although it went unnoticed, had permission to import cosmetics internationally, which greatly facilitated the entry of foreign money into the country.
Why was Conde being investigated again?
Although this operation had already been in progress for many months, it was not until these last weeks that all the necessary data to stop the banker have been confirmed. However, It has been confirmed that all this was triggered by a tip to the hacienda in which he was told that money was entering Spain into Mario Conde companies, which quickly alerted everyone.