The Spanish bank Abanca Corporacion Bancaria has agreed to pay a fine of 3.8 million euros to avoid prosecution in France for money laundering, in particular tax evasion, according to an agreement validated on Friday by the Paris court.
The president of the court, Stphane Nol, validated this legal agreement of public interest (Cjip), concluded between Abanca and the Paris prosecutor’s office on March 23, which provides in addition to the public interest fine of 3.8 million euros the payment to the French State by the bank of 500,000 euros in damages.
Abanca Corporacion Bancaria had been indicted for acts of money laundering committed between 2011 and 2013 and in a usual way, prosecutor Cline Ducournau recalled during the validation hearing.
The case had been discovered during an investigation into separate facts: the investigators established the existence of a compensation system between the cashing of checks and the supply of cash within the Paris representation office of Caixa Galicia , which was then restructured to give birth to Abanca.
The investigations revealed check remittances for more than 8 million euros, and that customers unrelated to Spain had cashed some of these checks.
According to the representative of the public prosecutor, the bank was able to derive income and other benefits from the operation of the disputed accounts and the capture of interested customers.
Me Guillaume Pellegrin, one of the bank’s lawyers, admitted during the hearing that in this representative office, one of the major subjects was that the use of checks and the outstanding amount of checks (.. .) had been diverted from its purpose.
The Cjip is not a last resort, he stressed. It’s not a degraded solution, it’s the best solution for everyone.
Within the framework of the Cjip, the penalty does not constitute either an admission of guilt or a conviction.