Writ of 25.04.2002 from the First Instance Criminal Court Number Five of Madrid: Judge Baltazar Garzon, on May 24, 2002, refrains from charging Mr. Marco Aurelio Royo for "the lack of specification in the witness’s depositions, the lack of original or attested documents; the documents provided by BBVA; the documents provided by Marco Royo Anaya, and the lack of momentaneous reply to the Letters Rogatory sent to Peru, renders the current accusation of specific persons, for specific offenses, in this section neither viable or feasible, or procedurally correct in the light of articles 118 LECrim, and 24 of the C.E." [ see attachment ].
Article from El Tiempo de Bogota 25.0.52002 "The Purchase of Latin Banks was Legal" [ see attachment, ].
Writ of 11.03.2005 from the First Instance Criminal Court Number Five, Madrid: Which provides for the dismissal of action regarding the purchase of Banco Ganadero. It states that "in all the processes carried out up till now, as has been stated in the previous sections, there are no objective data that may allow for minimally considering as well founded the charge made with regard to the criminal origin of the assets used for such operations" and adds "the existence of the punishable event has not been sufficiently proven or justified". It also states that "the course of international judicial assistance as well as the documents incorporated to the case have not provided or confirmed the initial suspicion based on the depositions of the protected witness". [ see attachment ].
Article from El Tiempo de Bogota, 15.03.2005, " Proceedings on Purchase of Banco Ganadero is Discontinued", [ see attachment ].
Expert and legal Auditing carried out by KPMG, which prove all the falsifications by Nelson Rodríguez López, former BBVA official, processed for theft and falsification. The investigation was handled by 30 experts from the KPMG in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Switzerland, New York, Puerto Rico and the Caiman Islands among others. The investigation proved that these wire transfers did NOT exist and that Marco Aurelio Royo had not done any of the 8 wire transfers mentioned by Rodriguez.
| KPMG |
I. Background
On November 16, 2001, Mr. Nelson Rodríguez López ("Mr. Rodríguez López") a former executive of the three entities of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. ("BBVA") in Puerto Rico, during the course of a voluntary deposition before the First Instance Criminal Court Number Five Madrid, Spain (hereinafter, the "Spanish court") made several affirmations accusing BBVA of various illegal activities with respect to its operations in several Latin American countries. Subsequently, Mr. Rodríguez López made other depositions before the same Spanish authorities in relation to said allegation, on March 25 and 26, 2002 in Puerto Rico (hereinafter jointly called the "Depositions").
During the Depositions, Mr. Rodríguez López stated that the alleged illegal activities of BBVA in Latin America were carried out through an irregular scheme of banking transfers that were allegedly intended to facilitate, to former stockholders of Latin American banks that had sold their stock to BBVA, the laundering of funds obtained from drug trafficking related activities. The alleged scheme, to a great extent, was justified by Mr. Rodríguez López through eight alleged bank transfers whose total amounted to US$553,961,833.45.
Attached to this Report, as Annexes A to H, are copies of the records of the documents that would allegedly justify these banking transfers and which were submitted by Mr. Rodríguez López during the aforementioned Depositions, which documents and depositions have been the source of our investigation.
Mr. Rodríguez López additionally presented other documents during the aforementioned Depositions, including copies of real banking transfers processed by one of the entities of BBVA in Puerto Rico where Mr. Rodríguez López worked (they are attached as Annexes I-1 to I-15), which have also been included in our investigation due to certain similarities with the aforementioned Annexes A to H.
II. Summary of the Investigation
The main results of our investigation are summarized below:
- Mr. Nelson Rodríguez López stated in his Depositions that Mrs. Dolores María Cristina Forero ("Ms. Forero"), a former employee of Banco Ganadero, S.A., Colombia, had given him eight documents that are attached as Annexes A to H) that would justify and support the eight alleged banking transfers that have been the subject of our investigation. Mrs. Forero has personally confirmed to KPMG that she does not know Mr. Rodríguez López and that she never provided him copies of any document, including specifically those related to the eight alleged banking transfers (Section VI of this report).
- The aforementioned Annexes A to H submitted as evidence by Mr. Rodríguez López and which supposedly had been provided by Mrs. Forero, could not have been generated through the S.W.I.F.T. transfer system which was the one used by the BBVA entities which presumptively intervened, according to Mr. Rodríguez López in the eight banking transfers (Sections IV and V of this report).
- We investigated the records and bank transfer movements in the BBVA entities that were presumptively involved in the alleged transactions, as well as those of the three BBVA entities in Puerto Rico where Mr. Rodríguez López worked until August 1998, without finding any evidence that the alleged banking transfers would have been carried out or would have gone through the transfer systems of these entities or through the alleged client accounts on the dates or around the dates indicated (Sections Iv, V and VII of this report).
- The Annexes A to H, submitted by Mr. Rodríguez López during his Depositions have similar formats to the records generated by the CASH CONNECTOR transfer system used by BBVAIIC and the other BBVA entities in Puerto Rico where Mr. Rodríguez López worked. As has been previously indicated, none of the BBVA entities involved by Mr. Rodríguez López in the eight alleged banking transfers used this system for its bank transfer operations. Said entities used the S.W.I.F.T. system, whose format is completely different. (Sections V, VII and VIII of this report).
- However, also according to the Depositions and documents submitted by Mr. Rodríguez López, none of the three BBVA entities in Puerto Rico participated in any of the eight alleged transfers. Accordingly, Annexes A to H could not have been generated by the CASH CONNECTOR system of these entities either (Section VII of this report).
- Additionally, the errors and inconsistencies in format, as well as the incomplete and erroneous information as regards names, account numbers, etc., observed in the eight documents that justify the alleged banking transfers, submitted as evidence by Mr. Rodríguez López, suggest that these documents appear to have a common source and do not reflect the real transactions (Section VIII of this report).
Writ submitted to the First Instance Criminal Court No. 5, by Dr. Marco Aurelio Royo Anaya, 30.04.2002. "Defense of my name in front of a great injustice." [ see attachment ].
Article on BBVA "BBVA denies accusations" [ see attachment ].
The newspapers from Spain dated July 2, 2002: El Mundo, La Vanguardia Digital, La Razón, El Periódico, La Gaceta, La Expansión, El País, La Vanguardia, as well as El Tiempo de Bogota newspaper give an account of the information whereby the witnesses summoned by Judge Garzon, all, without any exception, deny the false statements by Rodríguez López. Likewise, the newspapers publish the request made by BBVA to Judge Garzón, Rodríguez López, former official of BBVA Puerto Rico condemned for continuous theft and falsification, for falsification of documents. Clearly, Rodríguez López falsified and invented all the documents used in the accusation against BBVA from Spain and its top level officials, as well as the documents he filed to accuse the managers, members of the board of directors, etc., of the banks in Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and Mexico which BBVA legally acquired between 1994-1998 through the stock exchanges of the respective countries and fulfillment of all the legal requirements. [ see attachment ].