Jail for ex-CAM bosses
Innocent board member speaks of ‘long nightmare lasting several years’
ALICANTE provincial court has handed prison sentences to the ex-director general of the defunct CAM savings bank, Roberto López Abad and four of the board members for illegally awarding expenses to its president, Modesto Crespo.
According to the judgment, they were guilty of aggravated misappropriation for paying Sr Crespo €600,000 between 2009 and 2011 for being president of Tinser Cartera SL, a company owned by the CAM but which its statutes specify was ‘honorary and unpaid’.
The CAM was taken over by the Bank of Spain in July 2011 after 130 years of history.
The state injected €5.2 billion then sold it to Banco Sabadell for €1 after agreeing to cover 80% of any losses – which in 2017 the court of public sector auditors (Tribunal de Cuentas) put at €11 billion.
Elche businessman Modesto Crespo made a deal with the anticorruption prosecutor and other accusers to plead guilty and return the money in return for a nine-month prison sentence and a €9,000 fine. The judgment says he and Sr López-Abad ‘connived’ and ‘came up with a plan to dodge the statutory ban’, which was accepted by the four members of the remuneration committee who were also convicted: José Forner, Antonio Gil-Terrón, Luis Esteban and Martín Sevilla. Sr Forner was given two and a half years’ prison and a €48,000 fine because as secretary of the board of administrators he ‘drew up and approved’ the minutes of the meeting at which the expenses were supposedly approved.
The other 15 members of the board claimed the matter was never even discussed or voted on at the meeting and they were acquitted.
The other three members of the remuneration committee were given 18 months and a €21,000 fine. The board of administrators included some ordinary members of the public chosen at random from the CAM’s customers, such as Torrevieja-based accountant Raquel Páez.
She told Costa Blanca News the experience had been like a ‘long nightmare lasting several years’ but she was ‘relieved’ that ‘sometimes justice works’.
“It’s not easy to explain the feeling of frustration and impotence when you are mixed up in something, which you know you are not guilty of, but find it difficult to prove because others are able to manipulate the evidence,” she said.
“On top of this it was costing money I could not afford for a lawyer and I had to keep missing work for the trial. Not to mention the continuous headaches and upset stomachs from the stress, uncertainty and fear that it is out of your control.”