El prestigioso diario estadounidense dedica un reportaje al caso de la cuenta suiza de la familia Botín. El texto que firma su corresponsal Raphael Minder resalta el perfil de Emilio Botín, su éxito al frente del Santander y su vasta influencia en España. Aunque el NY Times apunta que la investigación sobre la cuenta secreta podría ser un importante revés y destaca que el caso no está siendo “agresivamente investigado” por los medios españoles.

Según el New York Times: “Emilio Botín es un banquero español multimillonario conocido por llevar las riendas con firmeza.” Pero recogen que hay un asunto “no tan pequeño sobre el que el señor Botín no ha podido mantener el control: una cuenta bancaria suiza abierta en secreto hace mucho tiempo por su padre, que creció tanto que cuando las autoridades españolas descubrieron su existencia el año pasado, el Sr. Botín y otros miembros de la familia pagaron 200 millones de euros en impuestos para evitar una acusación de evasión fiscal”.

Sobre la cuenta, el diario explica que la Audiencia Nacional española está investigando si el pago es suficiente, dado que algunos expertos calcula que el volumen de la cuenta podría llegar a los dosmil millones de euros. Y que el tribunal también está examinando la “maraña” de documentos presentados por la familia para comprobar si ha habido falsificación. Pero recogen las palabras del abogado de los Botin que asegura que la familia está cooperando con la investigación y que nadie ha sido acusado de mala conducta.

Y sobre la figura del propio Emilio Botin dicen: “a diferencia de otros países europeos, donde los banqueros son figuras en gran parte anónimas, el Sr. Botín tiene mucho poder en España. A pesar de que evita los eventos sociales y no hace muchas declaraciones públicas, su influencia se percibe como de gran alcance. Y ha sido capaz de mantener el control del Santander, a pesar de que su familia solo retiene un 2% de las acciones”.

Destacan que “su capacidad para fusionarse y hacer crecer al Santander es la envidia de bancos de todo el mundo… Pero ahora en vez de celebrar su extraordinaria hazaña de transformar un banco regional en un coloso financiero mundial, el patriarca millonario se enfrenta a una serie de retos que podrían llegar a poner en peligro más de un siglo de control familiar del banco”.

Finalmente el diario se fija en la poca repercusión que el caso ha tenido en los medios españoles: “en gran medida puede ser debido a la presunción generalizada de que no saldrá nada más gordo del caso. Aunque algunos periodistas españoles también reconocen que no han investigado agresivamente. “El Santander se gasta mucho en publicidad y esto influye en el tratamiento informativo que reciben”, dijo Salvador Arancibia, un periodista de negocios en Madrid que ha cubierto el Santander desde 1980 y que también ha trabajado para el banco. `Especialmente en un momento en que los medios de comunicación se encuentran en una situación financiera delicada´”.

Pero apuntan que “uno de los pocos lugares de España donde el Sr. Botín sí es criticado abiertamente es la Puerta del Sol, la plaza pública que desde mayo ha sido el hogar de las protestas de los indignados”.

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Y ahora, vayan atando cabos sueltos, damas y caballeros: ¿Se va entendiendo mejor por qué PP=PSOE=PP$O€=JP Morgan & Chase? ¿Y el por qué el P$O€ lo resucitó, financió y moldeó el amigou americanou con fondos de la CIA durante los estertores del yayo Paco para salvaguardar los intereses de las multinacionales yanquis -y las bases militares- y evitar que los currelas acabásemos votando al PCE tras la segunda restauración borbónica?¿El por qué Botín es judicialmente intocable?¿El por qué las políticas económicas y "de rescate" son calcaditas las unas de las otras en todos los paises PIGS, gobierne quien gobierne? Que es que hay que explicarlo todo, que parecemos nuevos, hostias!

A Banker’s Secret Wealth
By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and RAPHAEL MINDER
Published: September 20, 2011
Emilio Botín is a billionaire Spanish banker renowned for running a tight ship. He asks that his top credit officers at Santander — one of Europe’s largest banks — make a trek to his vacation home each summer to report on loan exposures. And he queries the head of his charitable foundation, euro for euro, on its smallest donations.

Yet, there is one not-so-small matter that Mr. Botín (pronounced bo-TEEN) has failed to keep tabs on: a Swiss bank account secretly opened long ago by his father that grew to such a size that when Spanish authorities discovered its existence last year, Mr. Botín and other family members paid 200 million euros (about $273 million currently) in taxes to avoid tax evasion charges.

At the request of tax fraud inspectors, a Spanish national court is investigating whether the payment is enough, given the amount that was stashed abroad; tax experts in Spain say that the account could reach two billion euros. The court has also said that officials need more time to sift through the blizzard of documents that the family submitted and will consider whether a criminal charge of document fraud should be brought.

A lawyer for the Botíns, Jesús Remón, said the family was cooperating with the investigation and was “fully in compliance with its tax obligations following their voluntary filing” last year. He added that no family member had been charged with wrongdoing.

Mr. Botín’s tax problems come as debate intensifies over whether struggling governments should demand more tax revenue from the rich. On Monday, President Obama called to end some tax breaks for the wealthiest taxpayers in the United States.

Last Friday, the Spanish government reintroduced a wealth tax that it had abolished three years earlier, hoping to collect an estimated 1.08 billion euros from taxpayers with more than 700,000 euros in declared assets. Spain’s wealthiest have so far not publicly endorsed calls for higher taxes, and Mr. Botín on Friday told reporters that “it seems to me very bad to reintroduce” the wealth tax.

More so than in other European countries, where bankers are largely anonymous figures, Mr. Botín holds sway in Spain. Although he avoids social events and his public utterances are few, his influence is seen as wide-ranging. And he has been able to retain control of Santander despite his family’s controlling just 2 percent of its shares.

Neither the judiciary nor the family has provided details about how much money the Swiss bank account contained or how the amount grew over time. Nor would Mr. Remón, the lawyer, comment on whether Mr. Botín had been aware of the account.

What is known is that Mr. Botín’s father, also called Emilio, left Spain with part of his wealth in late 1936, after the start of the Spanish Civil War, fearing, like many other Spaniards, what might come.

The elder Mr. Botín spent a few months in London before moving to Basel, Switzerland, and eventually returning to Spain to resume leadership of the bank that he had run since 1933. But while he returned to Spain, the money he salted away in Switzerland did not. The senior Botín died in 1993. Last year, the French government passed on to Spain data that it had obtained from Hervé Falciani, a former employee in HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary, naming almost 600 Spanish holders of secret bank accounts. Among those was one belonging to the estate of Mr. Botín’s father.

In his opening summary, the judge in charge of the case, Fernando Andreu, highlighted “the complexity of the hereditary structures” of trusts, foundations and other companies set up to oversee the account. The closest he came to explaining what was in the account was to say that it also included a 12 percent stake in Bankinter, a midsize bank in which Jaime Botín, Emilio’s brother, is a leading shareholder. That holding, at current stock market value, would be worth about $310 million.

Representatives for Mr. Botín have said that the family has voluntarily paid what it owes and that Mr. Botín expects that the government will agree and close the case. It seems altogether likely that Mr. Botín and his family will be cleared of any wrongdoing, which would come as no surprise to the banking patriarch’s fiercest critics.

“Santander is not only too big to fail but it is also the best corporate brand image that Spain has — so nobody in the government, judiciary or elsewhere is ever going to question seriously what they do,” said Antonio Panea, a lawyer and shareholder gadfly who has fruitlessly sued the institution on a dozen claims.

All of which misses the point, Mr. Botín’s defenders argue.

“I’m convinced that the Botíns are not motivated by money, they are motivated by love of banking,” said Mauro F. Guillén, a management professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a book on Santander’s rise to prominence. “If they were interested in maximizing their own wealth, they would have diversified out of Santander.”

Luis Arenzana, a portfolio manager in Madrid who worked at Santander as an investment banker in the early 1990s, said: “Some of what Santander has done was borderline ‘alegal’ rather than illegal. But then to be investigated occasionally for possible misconduct is the normal state of affairs for any large bank — anybody who succeeds in Spain is always suspected of wrongdoing.”

And a success it has been.

After taking over at the bank from his father in 1986, Mr. Botín caught domestic rivals flat-footed by raising the interest paid on deposits, by hugely increasing the market share of what had been a middle-of-the-pack bank with a minimal international presence.

Then, in a spate of deal making, Mr. Botín went from one takeover to the next. Besides Spain, Santander now has a dominant commercial banking presence in Brazil and Britain as well as a growing one in the United States through its majority stake in Sovereign Bank, based in Boston.

This ability to merge and grow made Santander the envy of banks worldwide. One of its competitors, Barclays, even went so far as to commission McKinsey to study how the bank did it, according to a person with knowledge of the consultancy project.

Now, instead of celebrating his extraordinary feat of transforming a regional bank into a global financial colossus, the billionaire patriarch is facing a set of challenges that could even jeopardize more than a century of family control of the bank.

In many respects, the financial crisis has done the most damage: Santander’s once high-flying stock is down almost 40 percent over the last year. And while the bulk of the bank’s profits come from Latin America and Britain, 35 percent of its loan book remains vulnerable to unemployment-ravaged Spain and bailed-out Portugal.

Spain’s main newspapers have left Mr. Botín’s tax problems mostly untouched after a flurry of stories in June when the criminal investigation was announced.

To a large extent that may be because of the widely held presumption that nothing more will come of the case. But some Spanish journalists also concede that they have not been aggressively digging.

“Santander spends massively on advertising and this influences the news treatment that they receive,” said Salvador Arancibia, a business journalist in Madrid who has covered Santander since 1980 and who has also worked for the bank. “Especially at a time when the media is in such a delicate financial situation.”

One of the few places in Spain where Mr. Botín is openly criticized is Puerta del Sol, the public square that since May has been home to the antiestablishment protests of Spain’s “indignados,” or “angry ones.” Beyond the slogans and puns disparaging the family name (Botín means loot or booty in English), a broader displeasure was on display.

“Botín is the symbol of the powerful banker,” said Luis De Miguel Sanz, a secondary school teacher. “So he can’t expect to be admired when his money is under investigation.”

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Recordemos qué hay detrás de Botín (que no es más que un testaferro...)

http://www.burbuja.info/inmobiliaria...-jpmorgan.html

En 2002 fue nombrada presidenta de Banesto

Tras acabar sus estudios, trabajó durante siete años en JP Morgan, en Estados Unidos. En 1988, volvió a España y comenzó a trabajar para el Grupo Santander.

JP Morgan y la crisis

Después de fortísimas inyecciones de la FED y del Gobierno norteamericano a finales del 2008, inicios del 2009, algunos grandes bancos como JP Morgan y Goldman Sachs sacaron provecho de ello para eliminar competidores y reforzar su tamaño

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Hay que matar a ese tio