MADRID (Reuters) - Former chiefs of nationalised Spanish lender Bankia denied blame for its fall at court hearings, as they attempted to fend off a lawsuit from small shareholders who lost out in the company's stock market flotation.
Rodrigo Rato, a former International Monetary Fund head and the last of 33 former executives accused of fraud, price-fixing and falsifying accounts, appeared before the judge in a 3-1/2 hour private session on Thursday.
Rato, who also served as Spain's economy minister, was confronted at the door of the High Court by about 100 people with signs reading "We've got the solution, bankers in prison", "Rato, rat, give the money back," and "We're savers, not investors."
The hearing was in a case brought by one of Spain's smaller political parties - the UPyD - together with small shareholders, after hundreds of thousands lost their savings by investing in the bank's floatation in July 2011, less than a year before it had to be bailed out.
The judge still has to decide whether to open a formal lawsuit after receiving testimony from Bankia's new chairman, the head of Spain's bank restructuring fund and the former governor of the Bank of Spain.
A source who attended the 33 testimonies said Rato and other former executives insisted they carried no responsibility for what happened.
"Rato said the problems of Bankia were limited to two key moments and the blame had to be taken by two institutions: the Bank of Spain, when it forced the merger of seven regional savings banks to form Bankia (in 2010), and the government, when it adopted tougher capital requirements for banks earlier this year," the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Another source said Jose Luis Olivas, former vice president of Bankia's parent BFA and previously head of Valencia's regional government, had also rejected any blame.
Francisco Verdu, previously No. 2 at Bankia, and Angel Acebes, a minister under a previous centre-right administration who served as a board member, said they did not detect any wrongdoing during their time at the bank, the source said.
FOLLOWING THE LAW
Rato, who was widely credited for a decade-long boom which Spain enjoyed until the bursting of a real estate bubble five years ago, was expected to stick to the line he defended in a parliamentary hearing in July.
He said then that Bankia had followed the law and behaved correctly. Rato said the government and the Bank of Spain had pressured Bankia to go through with the listing in order to restore confidence in Spain's banking system.
Anger among many Spaniards with political and business elites has intensified because Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government has imposed harsh austerity policies and has had to seek European Union aid to save a number of banks, including Bankia, from collapse.
But fury is particularly directed at Bankia, as hundreds of thousands of small savers were persuaded to buy the lender's shares when they were floated on the stock market, only to see their investments all but wiped out in less than a year.
According to a recent poll from Metroscopia, 92 percent of Spaniards believe political and financial elites should take the blame for the collapse of the banking system, which forced a massive injection of Spanish and European funds.
Investigations into the bank could eventually have political consequences. Many board members at the seven regional savings banks which formed Bankia in 2010 had connections to political parties or had served in government.
Under Spanish law, the crimes for which the proceedings have been opened carry jail sentences ranging from six months to six years. But some commentators have said that while corporate corruption cases grab the headlines in Spain, they rarely result in convictions.
Former Bankia executives reject blame for bank's fall
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Former Bankia executives reject blame for bank's fall
