The 19 hours of Celma's record (Deloitte) in the trial for the Bankia case
Deloitte partner Francisco Celma has put an end to this Tuesday's longest intervention of the trial for the IPO of Bankia, four days of statement in which his allusions to the possible liability of directors and directors of the entity have led him to receive friendly fire from the bench of the defenses.
More than 19 hours has required the room to interrogate the auditor, the only one of the defendants who has responded to all parties, to which he insisted endlessly that he could never issue a draft audit report on the annual accounts of 2011, lacking "relevant information" that was only provided after the arrival of the new management team.
Circumstance, that of the lack of valuations, risks and refinancing, which, he explained, communicated to the entity through 13 emails and from which he came to warn directly the then President of Bankia, Rodrigo Rato, in a telephone conversation held in April 2012.
"I said, 'President, it's not going,'" Celma recalled in one of the days, the same one in which she revealed that from that talk she only got an answer to forget the "happy documentation", before reproaching the comments " insidious "discharged by the former vice-president of the Government during the trial.
Between the cordiality and the aplomb of those who consider themselves innocent of some crimes for which popular and private accusations call for up to twelve years in prison, the auditor wanted to erase any hint of suspicion that his colleagues on the bench, united under the umbrella of formed part of the entity, could have awakened in court in the days leading up to his testimony.
And it is that beyond his greater or lesser tune with Rato, have been his disagreements with the ex-Counselor of Bankia Araceli Mora who have made their speech, especially after the professor frowned on his contradictions in the version offered to the board of the bank in 2012 with what he declared a year later in court, then still as a witness.
The "lack of relevant information" has been Celma's maxim after hearing how the ex-advisors of BFA-Bankia had opted for the "nobody told me there was a problem" to download the possible responsibilities that they blame except the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor.
An exchange of dialectical darts that have led the rest of the defenses to raise questions that are notably tougher than those of accusations such as that of the Inter-union Confederation of Savings Banks (CIC), the forerunner of the imputation of the partner and the firm in the final stretch of the inquiries.
The most incisive was Carlos Aguilar, lawyer of the former Minister of the Interior and former president of the audit committee of BFA, Angel Acebes, who came to reprimand him for saying that his client had never given him his contact when in 2013 he acknowledged in training that he had his phone and your email.
"What you say is a falsehood," the lawyer said to a room to which Celma has addressed on more than one occasion to stop the attacks of the stands.
Controversy also around the writing written on April 18, 2012, in which the auditor states that the accounts formulated in 2011 "reflect the faithful image of the entity", a mere "paper" according to him based on a private conversation with Rato and without any value.
However, in his first statement "he says that the BFA draft had two caveats, that he passed it on to the financial controller and the president, and that he even contributed before that to Bankia," Aguilar said, making it necessary for the first time in the hearing the hearing of audios at the request of the Office of the Prosecutor.
"I'm not going to enter into wars again," said an increasingly pacifying Celma, who in this last session wanted to point out that although he did not have the necessary information to express his opinion about the accounts, he does not have the impression that anyone I wanted to obstruct "his work.
However, the auditor has clarified that the authentic account of what happened in Bankia is the one that has offered in this trial and that any other version is an "error" resulting from fatigue for the "five and a half hours" that testified before the judge Fernando Andreu.
A milestone, that of the five and a half hours, which remains anecdotic after four intense sessions that make the interrogation of Celma in the most extensive of those that have been held to date, even surpassing that of Rato himself.
