Bankers are Criminals

Top Criminal Banker freed after 2 months, thanks to Fascist Connections

Mario Conde freed on bail. Photo: AFP

Disgraced banker freed thanks to Franco fans

A disgraced Spanish banker accused of fraud and embezzlement is to come out on bail thanks to high-ranking members of the Francisco Franco Foundation.

Mario Conde, 67, was arrested in April amid allegations of money laundering a vast fortune embezzled when he was head of Banesto bank.

He was remanded in jail pending an investigation but could be granted release for €300,000 bail to await trial from the comfort of his one of his several homes in Spain.

It emerged on Wednesday that the financial guarantee has been given by the Alonso Garcia brothers, Jaime Francisco and Jose Angel, who used four properties on the Canary Island of Fuerteventura as a guarantee. You can be sure Mario has millions of black money stashed around the globe to pay back his fascist friends.

The brothers are high ranking members of the Francisco Franco Foundation, an organization dedicated to the memory of General Franco, the dictator who ran Spain with an iron fist for 40 years until his death in 1975.

Conde, who became a symbol of the “get-rich-quick” culture in Spain in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was chairman of Banesto when it was taken over in 1993 after an audit revealed a shortfall of €3.6 billion euros ($4.1 billion).

He was sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2002 for embezzlement and fraud but was released on parole in 2005 and declared himself insolvent to avoid paying the compensation ordered by the courts when he was sentenced for his offenses at Banesto.

He was arrested, along with his son, daughter, and her husband in April on suspicion of using front companies to channel some €13m stashed in accounts in the UK, Switzerland and Luxemburg, back to Spain. from The Local with thanks

Since the fall of Mario Conde hundreds of politicians and businessmen have been charged with corruption in Spain, but all except one or two are still free.

Franco finally stripped of mayor title by Catalan town (26 May 16)
Spain’s ‘Gatsby’ arrested over laundering €13m in aloe vera (12 Apr 16)
Heirs of dictator Franco named in tax haven leak (07 Apr 16)

Occupy Wall St: 1000s defy brutal police

Several thousand anti-Wall Street protesters marched through downtown Manhattan on Friday night to protest against incidents of police brutality at a previous demonstration.

The group was part of the Occupy Wall Street movement which has camped for almost two weeks in a New York square to protest against the finance industry, among other grievances.

The group had attempted a march last weekend which ended in scores of arrests. Numerous incidents of police roughing up protesters were caught on film including one senior officer spraying mace at several female demonstrators being kept behind a police barrier.

Video of that attack went viral on the internet prompted mainstream media – which had mostly ignored the protests – to give them sympathetic attention. Computer hackers also released the name and address of the officer caught on film. Since then the occupation has garnered many new supporters and global press attention.

It has attracted celebrity visits from liberal figures such as filmmaker Michael Moore and actor Susan Sarandon. On Friday an apparently false rumour that the band Radiohead were to play an impromptu gig at the square caused a temporary Twitter storm.

But Friday night’s march was aimed at highlighting the police violence at the previous protest. A long line of placard-carrying demonstrators wound the short distance from Zuccotti Park where the protesters are camped near Wall Street to Police Plaza, where the New York Police Department has its headquarters.

The march was led by a group of elderly grandmothers wearing yellows bibs emblazoned with the words: “Grannies for peace”. That seemed to symbolise the protest’s good-natured mood which appeared to be matched by the police’s willingness to give the group the freedom to demonstrate.

Michele Moore, a former bank worker from Georgia, said she had been on the previous week’s march that had ended in violence. “The videos of those events were completely accurate,” she said. But she added that Friday’s protest had felt completely different. “Everything I saw today was peaceful and positive. It was delightful,” Moore said.

The protest was filled with the usual mix of Occupy Wall Street supporters. But there was also a smattering of people wearing T-shirts with trade union logos as well as ordinary working New Yorkers