Caja Madrid 'ordered staff to hide' preferential share details from customers 'duped' into signing their savings away
Friday, October 11, 2013 @ 10:41 AM
ONE of the main banks involved in the preferential share scam which has seen thousands of account-holders across Spain lose their life's savings sent an internal memo round to staff ordering the to hide the terms and conditions from customers.
Caja Madrid, now part of the nationalised entity Bankia, was among the banks found to have sold preferential shares in the firm to regular clients disguised as risk-free savings plans, which were then proven worthless when the company collapsed and was bought out by the State.
Most of the account-holders in question had little or no financial services knowledge and some were elderly with practically no formal education, meaning they trusted staff at the banks when they were told to sign on dotted lines.
A lawyer representing the so-called 15-M movement, which has been railing against cutbacks, unemployment, high taxes, repossessions and other socially-damaging issues and which is now collectively suing the banks behind the scam says that the internal document from the Caja Madrid shows 'company policies programmed and designed' to obtain customers' consent – which was absent in some cases anyway – via 'deception and fraud' by 'hiding the reality of the product or service' and even 'manifestly describing features of the same which were false'.
Read more at thiknSPAIN.com