Anti-corruption sends the fiscal accusation for the Emperor operation to its Andorran counterparts through a rogatory commission
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has sent the indictment against the alleged leader of the Chinese mafia in Spain, Gao Ping, to its Andorran counterparts, to help them prove the crime of money laundering of which the former CEO of the Private Bank of Andorra (BPA) Joan Pau Miquel and another 23 defendants in the trial that is taking place in the principality.
The relevance of the Anticorruption brief is that, among other crimes, it accuses of money laundering Sergi Fernández Genés, then Director of International Private Banking at BPA, to whom Anti-Corruption grants a fundamental role in money laundering for the Chinese criminal organization. In fact, he requests 11 years in prison and more than 50 million euros in fines for the crimes of criminal organization, money laundering and falsehood in commercial documents.
The collaboration between the two public ministries is not new. It is carried out by the system of international judicial assistance known as a rogatory commission. According to tax sources reporting to this newspaper, a second has now been added to a first carried out in 2015, with the indictment in which it is requested 47 years in prison for the leader of the Chinese plot dismantled in Operation Emperor.
Money laundering and criminal organization
Fernandez Genes was arrested in Andorra in 2012 within Operation Emperorconsidering the judge who initiated the investigation of the case, Fernando Andreu, that this bank employee is part of the framework created by the Gao Ping organization for tax and capital evasion and, finally, money laundering from at least 2011, “when there is knowledge of the activities of the criminal organization related to the Principality of Andorra & rdquor ;.
The accusation against Fernández Genés is closely related to that of Rafael Pallardo Calatrava, who, according to one of the notebooks intervened in the case, between February 13, 2011 and December 6, 2012 would have laundered 14,000,000 euros, for which he charged a commission of 180,000 euros. To do this, in addition to the movement of large amounts of cash, according to the Spanish prosecutor’s office, he used Andorran entities.
Fifteen years for Pallardó
Anti-corruption requests for Pallardó a total of 15 years in prison for the same crimes as against Fernández Genésincluding money laundering.
The trial in Andorra is the first in the BPA case, for which the Government of the Principality of Andorra intervened in the Andorran bank in 2015 when it was accused of money laundering of capital from Venezuelan, Russian and Chinese citizens, as is the case of the plot allegedly led by Gao Ping. However, the Andorran Penal Code does not provide for the imputation of legal persons, so BPA has not been formally investigated.
Related news
In Spain, the previous owners of BPA, the brothers Higini and Ramon Ciercohave filed a lawsuit in the National High Court in which they demand that the Bank of Spain compensate them with 141 million for causing the liquidation of Banco Madrid for money launderingan accusation that was filed in a Madrid court, according to ‘El Mundo’.
Precisely, the Madrid newspaper published a letter from the former Secretary of State for Security Francis Martinezone of the main defendants in the Villarejo case, addressed to the Cierco brothers, in which the one who was number two in the Ministry of the Interior defended that the intervention of the financial entity was a decision of “obvious political nature” that, in addition, describes as “unjustified, disproportionate and unfair”.