The home and office of former IMF managing director Rodrigo Rato were searched on Thursday as part of a tax and money laundering investigation into his personal wealth, Spanish judicial officials said.
Earlier, cameras showed Rato wearing a suit without a tie and being escorted from his home by police and tax officials amid a heavy media presence.
He was later released after cooperating with authorities who seized documents relevant to the investigation, a judicial source said.
Rato was quoted by news agency EFE as saying he had “confidence in Spain’s judicial system” and had been helpful to officials who carried out the search.
Judicial officials are now to decide on the basis of those documents whether suspicions of money laundering, fraud and asset stripping have any legal basis, the judicial source said. They are then to decide whether to name a magistrate to open formal proceedings against him.
Rato’s lawyers, Oliva-Ayala, confirmed they represent him, but could not immediately comment, while several calls and an e-mail seeking comment from someone who has acted on his behalf in the past were not returned.
Spain’s state prosecutor had requested a search of Rato’s home as part of an investigation focused on the former IMF managing director as well as “other people,” according to a brief court statement in which further details were not provided.
Rato is a former Spanish deputy prime minister who was long a leading light of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s center-right Popular Party before being implicated in two other judicial cases.
Magistrates are investigating the alleged widespread misuse of company credit cards for personal expenses during Rato’s tenure as chairman of the bailed-out Bankia.
Rato is also one of several former managers under investigation for fraud as courts separately decide whether Bankia’s 2011 stock market flotation was flawed. He denies wrongdoing in both cases.
Spain holds regional and local elections next month and a general election toward the end of the year in which the Popular Party is expected to suffer heavy losses because of the implication of big party names in graft investigations in recent years.
Coming at a time in which unemployment affects almost one in four and most ordinary Spaniards are poorer than before an economic downturn six years ago, graft cases cause particular public outrage.
Opinion polls consistently show corruption is among Spanish voters’ top concerns, and discontent with the political class has fostered the rise of two new parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos, which are predicted to win significant voter support this year.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS