CAM bank boss pays 1.5-million-euro bail release and leaves prison
Friday, November 15, 2013 @ 7:23 PM
HEAD of the now-defunct CAM bank Roberto López Abad has paid a 1.5-million-euro bail release to get out of jail.
Legal sources say the former bank boss, held over siphoning funds out of the company and who allegedly planned to flee to the Caribbean island of Curaçao, left Madrid's Navalcarnero prison at 19.30hrs yesterday (Wednesday).
His second-in-command Daniel Gil paid a bail bond of 400,000 euros the very next day after being remanded in custody and was released, but his passport has been confiscated by High Court judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez and he has been ordered to report to the court every fortnight.
López Abad has been behind bars for nearly a week attempting to raise the funds for his release.
Along with another four top directors from the Comunidad Valenciana-based bank – which was swallowed up by Banco Sabadell last year – López Abad and Gil are accused of stashing 247 million euros in an offshore bank account on Curaçao, having laundered it through sales and purchases of land and hotels in the Dominican Republic and eastern México as a 'front' for their illicit operations.
They are also accused of deliberately effecting investments – namely, the hotels – which they knew the CAM bank's capital reserves could not cope with and which eventually caused the company to fold, leaving account-holders high and dry and shareholders having lost their life's savings as these were now worthless
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com