This story could not be real.
If you were making a film someone would
say, "okay, that's too...
no, that's not possible. 
It's not real. 
It's not possible, make it real." 
I have no lack of confidence in saying
and explaining what really happened.
And if have to go to jail because I have
said something which I
should 
not say, 
someone tell me. 
And I went home,
And I said to my wife, this is the end.
I woke up
my sons and said, 
today is the end. 
They started case against me, and against
my wife.
I think this is a 
process to make fear. I lost everything.
I start from zero.
Sooner or later, 
they will try to indict us for whatever:
money laundering,
child abuse, 
drug trafficking, or whatever. They will
invent it, and they will try it. Because
at the end is not a matter of result,
it's a matter of destroying the person,
and in that way, destroying the line of
defense.
I agree with 
the Rule of Law. 
And I also agree with 
the basic terms of 
democracy, 
but they don't. 
It's quite strange no to protect, in the
name of democracy, the heritage of the
dictatorship, with no separation of
powers,
no respect 
for freedom, 
for the truth. 
And you never think, 
you never believe, that you will be 
the target 
of a 
conspiracy, or that you will be in the
middle of a story like this one.
I mean, this is something that you see in
the news.
People are getting fed up and it will get
to a point that it will explode. Andorra
will pay the price, unfortunately.
It will pay the price. The young people
especially.
My father wasn't bad.
He had a problem because the government
sold our country to America.
Our story begins in Andorra, a micro
country with a land mass of 181 square
miles, consisting of a couple of valleys
in the Pyrenees Mountains, landlocked
between France and Spain, with a total
population of less than 80,000 people.
You can seat the entire population of
Andorra's capital city inside
Madison Square Garden. If you've never
heard of the country of Andorra until
now, you are not alone.
It's not uncommon for an Andorran
resident entering the United States to
be stopped by passport control and
questioned under the accusation of
carrying a fake passport from a fake
country.
The quality of life in Andorra is one of
the highest in the world. No poverty, no
crime, and ranked in the top five safest
countries. The source of its healthy GDP
comes from 8 million tourists visiting
annually for its skiing, duty-free
shopping, and its banking system.
Andorra first gained its independence in
the year 1278, and for the next 700
years Andorra was ruled by medieval
feudal overlords, until it finally
created an executive, legislative, and
judicial branch of government when it
first established its constitution in
1993.
Andorra has had a very paradoxical
situation for many years now.
Keep in mind that the country has two
heads of state. It has two co-princes.
One is the president of France, and the
other is the bishop of the Seu d’Urgell.
That is, at the top of Andorran’s power
structure, there is a person named by
the Vatican.
This goes back to the middle ages, for
centuries, a legacy of feudal times.
While Andorra is the world's only
co-principality, its 1993 constitution
also added democratically elected
presidents.
During World War II, 
there were many Jews fleeing to Spain, 
fleeing from Nazi persecution, through
Andorra
It is known, that some Andorran people
murdered Jews who were fleeing—
robbed them of jewelry and money. 
This jewelry, this money, is the origin
of many fortunes in Andorra.
Unlike other countries that utilized
offshore banking as a haven to hide
their stolen wealth during World War II,
Andorra's flagship bank was born this way. 
Offshore banking simply refers to the
deposit of funds by a company or
individual in a bank that is located
outside of their national residence.
It's not always a vacation destination
like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, or the
British Virgin Islands.
Offshore banking is everywhere, with some
of the most accessible offshore banking
located right inside the United States.
This simple fact of opening a bank account
offshore 
doesn't imply 
that you are doing something wrong. 
Let's take Argentina. 
Argentina is a country were approximately
every 10 years,
some way or another, one way or another,
the government steals the money from its
population.
Either by means of inflation or by means
of
seizing the money...
they find a way. 
They're very creative in that. 
So if you're in Argentina, what you do is
just to first, have dollars, not pesos,
and second, just to hide your wealth
under your mattress if you can, or
if you can afford it, just to go
somewhere else
in the world 
and store your money there. 
However, most of the world's Fortune 500
companies store trillions of dollars of
their profits offshore to avoid paying
taxes.
293 Fortune 500 companies with offshore
earnings collectively
owe 752 billion dollars in federal taxes. 
That's 52 billion dollars more than the
bank bailout of 2008.
Celebrities, businessmen, world leaders,
and politicians from both sides of the
aisle safely store their wealth in
offshore banking to avoid paying taxes,
by opening up fake shell companies to
hide their money.
America's IRS is powerless over this, 
so they audit the poor instead. Given the
inherent secrecy and anonymity of shell
companies, terrorist funding, drug, and
human trafficking profits and all sorts
of criminal money,
laundering is rampant.
Every day, open the newspaper, 
and you will see all this news about
criminal networks.
All that money--
most of it--is passing through the
financial system.
And the most a bank can do
is just 
apply certain controls, which are
standardized.
So 
in that regard, the banks, the most they
can do is just to try to minimize
the damage. The problem is that the
trend--in many countries in the last 10
years--from the authorities,
the police, has been to point to the to
the banks and the individuals working at
those banks, and they are making them
responsible for what the clients do.
You can fight, 
you can make your best,
you can have a very big team, but 
you cannot avoid money laundering. It's
not possible.
It's like--you have to avoid criminals? 
And they say okay, 
we have a police.. 
We have the police, we don't have
criminals.
No. You have the police, and you have
criminals. You have the compliance
department, and you have money laundering.
If a client comes to make a deposit at
your bank with a briefcase with 1
million dollars stained with blood,
well, maybe 
there's some leading indicators here that
may point to something wrong, but
honestly, it's completely uncontrolled.
In the wake of the attacks of September
11, America introduced the Patriot Act
and within it, also introduced something
called a Section 311 to "promote the
prevention, detection, and prosecution
of international money laundering and
financing of terrorism". Section 311 of
the USA Patriot Act grants the director of
FinCEN the authority, upon finding that
reasonable grounds exist for concluding
that a foreign jurisdiction, foreign
financial institution, class of
transactions, or type of accounts is of
primary money-laundering concern, to
require financial institutions and
financial agencies to take certain
special measures to address the primary
money laundering concern. FinCEN may
impose one or more of these special
measures in order to protect the U.S.
Financial system from these threats.
FinCEN stands for the U.S. Department of
Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement
Network.
A Section 311 notice issued by FinCEN
consists of nothing more than a standard
press release..
Section 311 was designed to deal with a
very severe problem that could lead to a
need for emergency action, and it's being
used for anything but. It's a tool and
it's being used for other political or
regulatory goals, and there's really no
recourse. While the
September 11 attacks cost the terrorists
a half a million dollars to execute, in
2012, HSBC an offshore bank,
originating in Hong Kong, was caught and
openly admitted to assisting the Sinaloa
drug cartel and terrorist organization in
Mexico to launder at least 881 million
dollars, enough to pay for 1762
September 11 attacks. FinCEN never
issued a Section 311 against HSBC, and
HSBC is still operating business as usual.
In 2017, when Denmark's offshore bank
Danske Bank was caught and
admitted to laundering 230 billion
dollars of criminal money for the
Russian State, the equivalent of 460,000
September 11 attacks, FinCEN never issued
a Section 311 against Danske Bank either.
In fact, no large commercial bank of
primary money-laundering concern has
ever had a Section 311 issued against
them.
Some of the banks are really making a
business line out of doing really bad
business, or their procedures and policies
you could drive a truck through. 
Nobody goes to jail, and these banks are
so large
that they're not going to get shut down. 
And so what you have is a 
situation where 
only the little guys in the little places,
where it's not going to cause
a disruptive effect system-wide... 
and so in that sense, the biggest
wrongdoers have the most insulation
and 
the 
smallest wrongdoers, or those that aren't
even doing wrong at all,
are going to be victims without any
meaningful redress.
And if you look at 
who 
has been gone after with Section 311
notices, they're almost always smaller
banks in smaller places.
To begin, 
I am 
Joan Cejudo.
I did my studies in Barcelona, 
in
economics. 
I stayed for about 30 years in 
"La Caixa",  now 
Caixabank, and finally, I came to Andorra
to Banca Privada d'Andorra, BPA, which
was a bank who was trying to 
grow.  It was advertised to me when I
came to Andorra that
this country was near to losing its
condition of
tax haven, 
sooner rather than later, because 
of pressure 
from Spain and France against tax havens. 
And, 
in fact, immediately
we bought a bank in Spain which was Banco
Madrid, and it was clear from the first
moment that
our future was in the onshore system, 
not in the offshore one. 
It had its days 
near to close.
Then, 
Banco Madrid was the jewel of the crown
and it was 
a history of success until the moment 
that the bomb came. 
On March 10th, 2015, the United States
Treasury's FinCEN issued a Section 311
press release against BPA.
I didn't know who were 
FinCEN until that moment. 
And the three or four persons that word
in the room,
we didn't know anything about FinCEN. 
I had no idea 
what FinCEN was, to be honest. 
I knew what FinCEN was. 
but they didn't. 
For me, that was a normal day. 
I just walked into the bank, went  to my
office...
At 12 o'clock
the INAF called me
and said, "Santi, 
you have to come to INAF,
to our offices." 
And then Santi appears, he said, "We need
to go to the INAF."
I said, to the INAF? 
It's a regulator, I mean,
you deal with the regulator. 
And he said,
we need to go to the INAF. 
Santi, Pablo Laplana, and myself,
and we stayed there 
waiting, waiting, waiting, 
And they didn't explain anything. 
We started to talk, obviously, 
among us, and what's going on and they
said, we have no idea of what's going on.
Nobody told us...
They said that we cannot go out. 
They didn't allow us to leave, which was
quite surprising that INAF...
Santi said, "I need to go out"--he's
diabetic--so he said "I need to go out."
My father is diabetic person. 
So 
he needs his insulin, and my mom told me, 
"I just went to the to the place where
all the people of the bank were...".
She came--actually--I remember I said
to him, "do you have a phone charger
spare at home?"
"Yes? Please bring it", because we were
running out of batteries with all the
messages and
calls...I received other messages from
other people saying the word on the
street is that the BPA is bankrupt.
Other people were telling me 
"The bank has liquidity problems..."
I mean, I said, "that's impossible". 
So I discarded those. 
And then we started to look at internet. 
The notice is issued,
we saw that notice in our cell phones,
It surprised us. 
For me, it was incredible. 
It's like a shock, because they are
talking about some things that are not
real.
To be honest, the first reaction 
that we had was of...we were relaxed 
because we saw what was on the notice--
this makes no sense--
the notice is full of misrepresentations, 
I would say, 
of the of the actual facts.
And also the notice had outdated
information. And we were relaxed.
I mean, okay, we can handle this. 
It's not that we have
an account from Osama Bin Laden and we
didn't know about that. That would be a
huge problem.
So they issued a Section 311 notice. 
It was under the Patriot Act. 
There was no suggestion of any terrorism
whatever.
Andorra's president Antoni Martí
immediately appeared on television.
Banca Privada d’Andorra, and I quote:
“is an entity of major concern in terms
of money laundering.”
Following this statement the American
authorities are suggesting measures to
restrict
BPA’s operational capacity in the future.
I insist, it is a case of alleged
malpractices, and not a situation of
solvency risks or balance problems.
They were not simply just an Andorran
bank, they were a Spanish bank, so they
had to subject all of their policies and
procedures to the scrutiny
of 
a European Union regulator, which had to
meet all European Union regulations, and
they hired top accounting firms to do the
work and make sure that were running it
properly, and fully in accordance with
the Andorran regulatory system, but also
with global standards on money laundering.
99% of 
the world's top 1000 
companies are regularly audited by at
least one of the world's top four major
accounting firms: KPMG, Deloitte,
PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Ernst &
Young. Based on the international
anti-money laundering regulations
established by the United Nations,
Article 52, Prevention and detection of
transfers of proceeds of crime,
KPMG conducted independent annual
anti-money laundering audits of BPA from
2008 to 2012,
overlapping with Deloitte, independently
auditing BPA in 2007 and 2013, followed
by a 2014 audit completed by Andorra's
own financial intelligence unit.
All three of these independent audits
demonstrated zero money laundering
activity during the same timeframe that
America's Section 311 alleges BPA was
engaging in money laundering.
March 11, 2015--24 hours after America's
Section 311 against BPA. Maria Cosan,
the director of INAF and Andorra's
financial regulator goes
on national television assuring the
people of Andorra
that everything is fine. 
In no way was this intervention triggered
by anything related to the solvency and
liquidity of the entity.
This shouldn’t affect the clients,
because this is an investigation
into potential bad practices regarding
the prevention of money laundering,
and nothing to do with the entity’s
solvency or liquidity.
Meanwhile, while Maria Cosan is speaking
to the Andorran people, BPA's small
sister branch in Panama is ordered
liquidated. BPA Panama's liquidation and
audit was headed by Jaime de Gamboa. In
my direct communication with Mr.
de Gamboa,
he confirmed his role, and confirmed an
independent two-year audit concluding
that "no money laundering transactions
were detected". The following morning,
on March 12, 48 hours after America's
Section 311 the Andorran government and
INAF, headed by Maria
Cosan, suddenly contradict everything
they had said in the previous 48 hours,
and ordered all BPA customer accounts
frozen, allowing each customer a maximum
withdrawal of 2,500 euros per week,
causing mass protests in Andorra with
BPA's customers demanding full access to
their accounts.
The general manager of INAF
was the auditor 
working at KPMG,
and was the auditor o
of BPA 
from 2008 
until 2011. 
And when finished at KPMG, 
she went to be the general manager of
INAF.
So she was the auditor
of all the activity of BPA.
Spanish bank
Banco Madrid has filed for bankruptcy.
Customers rushed to empty their accounts.
BPA's
Banco Madrid simultaneously goes bankrupt.
In the Spanish media, members of the
government
went on official TV saying that Banco
Madrid was a laundering machine and
crimes everywhere...
now
there are 
sentences 
on the court that state that there was no
laundering at all in Banco Madrid,
But 
the thing is done. 
The order was 
to 
liquidate it. 
Also on March 12, the Andorran government
and INAF seized full control of BPA,
resulting in the majority of BPA''s
management fired and sent home until
further notice.
I remember that every morning I woke up
and I said to my father, okay, how hard
is it going to be today?
On a scale from one to ten, how hard is
it going to be today?
I say, 
today is the end. 
He was fired, but not just fired, he
didn't...he wasn't able to work as an
economist anymore.
March 13th, 2015,--72 hours after
America's Section
311-- John Paul Miguel Prats, BPA's 
CEO, is arrested and spends the next two
years in prison, which is the maximum
time allowed to be held in prison under
Andorran law without the Andorran police
requiring any burden of proof that an
actual crime has been committed.
I never imagined that could happen. Two
years?
That's not normal. 
What is there that is allowing them to 
arrest him? 
What do they have? 
And it ended up that they didn't have
anything.
March 16, 2015--6 days after America's
Section 311, Jordi Cinca, Andorra's
Minister of Finance, goes on national
television.
The overseeing body, INAF,
Immediately implemented measures; 
These measures were extraordinary and had
never been seen in Andorra,
And they were decisive.
And to keep moving forward, 
to maintain a firm resolve and commitment 
regarding transparency, 
regarding information exchange,
and regarding preventing money laundering. 
This commitment is unwavering. Nothing,
nothing will make it buckle.
The infamous Panama Papers leak revealed
that
Mr. 
Jordi Cinca, before becoming Andorra's
Finance Minister, was also the owner of
an offshore company.
This company was in the business of the
blood diamond trade. Jordi Cinca held
significant shares in an Andorran
company called Orfund, a conglomerate
dedicated to gold and diamonds. Three
subsidiaries of this group operated in
Liberia under the bloodthirsty dictator
Charles Taylor, who gave tax privileges
to one of
Orfund's subsidiaries. Charles Taylor is
currently sentenced to 50 years in
prison for crimes against humanit,y at a
special war crimes Court in The Hague.
And it was proven in court that the
civil war he waged that led to the rape,
dismemberment, and murder of countless
civilians was financed
by the diamond trade. Jordi Cinca was not
merely a shareholder,
he also actively worked with the Orfund
Group. Cinca's name appears on this
document, for example, as the sender of
500,000 pesetas
to El Haji Fofana,  the dictator's
right-hand man involved in that civil
war with whom this Andorran company was
working with to be able to exploit the
blood diamond mines in Liberia.
In addition, Jordi Cinca had contact
through this company with Fernando
Fernandez Robleda, an associate of one
of the largest arms dealers in Africa,
Jordi Cinca is a character that I know
very well. I certainly know him well.
He filed a complaint against my honor,
regarding some information I published,
and a book I published in which I showed
in great detail how and in what way he
was implicated
in an international plot of buying and
selling diamonds and gold that didn’t
pass through customs control and other
legally established controls,
through an Andorran company called Orfund.
Naturally, I won the lawsuit. He lost
and had to pay all costs because the
judge ruled in my favor, and spoke of
the impeccable journalism we did in this
book.
 The book was called Dirty Diamonds. 
And naturally, he was not denounced by
his government because he was part of
the government,
and he was not denounced by the police
nor the prosecutor,
because the prosecutor has an almost
structured dependence on the Andorran
government.
Also on March 16, Jordi CInca concludes
his national address without mentioning
that he contracted
PricewaterhouseCoopers to begin auditing
BPA's alleged money laundering activity.
How the government of Andorra managed 
to know 
if in 
BPA there were a lot of criminals?
Contracting
Pricewaterhouse, Pricewaterhouse is an
American
firm who is one of the big four, and if
Pricewaterhouse says it is good,
it is good, and it says it is bad, it is
bad,
and the United States will accept it,
because it's Pricewaterhouse.
I was there when Pricewaterhouse came to
BPA. I was there
and I saw how they worked. 
To your knowledge have they found
anything wrong?
No, not at all. 
Not at all.
And... 
nothing bad. 
Well, this is not possible. 
Here...it must be something wrong. If
FinCEN says, it is true.
Finally,
they had to make something unbelievable. 
They asked me, 
because at first I thought they were in
good faith,
and I was in good faith, 
they asked me,  
"Okay, Isabel, tell us which are the 
'complicated customers' the customers-- 
if you had to make any suspicions of your
customers,
which of your customers would that be?"
and I make a list for them. And the list
was--
is the list they say are  the clients
that has not passed. Nothing else.
In other words, after analyzing 15
million transactions spanning seven
years, of more than 37,000 accounts,
PricewaterhouseCoopers found zero
evidence of money laundering at BPA.
PricewaterhouseCoopers
then asks Isabel, BPA's compliance
officer, to make a list of possible
suspicious accounts, which were
immediately placed into the money
laundering pile, which amounted to 2165
customers, or 7.4% of BPA''s open
accounts, amounting to 32.4 %
of the entire monetary value of deposits
of BPA.
And, what happens?
The clients passed through a crucifixion.
Well, PricewaterhouseCoopers 
came to Andorra with a lot of young 
economists, very young, 
and 
made 
bad work for me. 
There is nothing
worse 
than an incompetent with an incentive.
In order for PricewaterhouseCoopers to
keep their charade alive,
They needed to invent reasons for these
customers to be categorized as money
launderers.
They accomplished this by demanding proof
of origin for each and every penny
deposited in these selected accounts,
thus creating an instant demand
forAndorra's legal professionals.
But it’s so stupid, the way this is—for
example they asked a client, “this money
paid to a Ford dealership to buy a car,
where did it come from?”
And they asked us for a receipt. 
This was from 2008! They’ve asked us for
absurd things.
This is 10 years later. 
You asked me about when I buy a car. 
Are you crazy? 
Or this 
500 euros.
What did you do with this? 
I don't remember. 
"Ah, you are a money launderer."
If you don't demonstrate the origin of
the money is good,
you will not get it. 
"Oh, but it belongs to my father and my
father is dead;
I don't know how to..."
How many account holders do you represent? 
Between 700 and 1000.
700 to 1000, the two of you? 
Yes. All of our clients are honest people,
because we did our KYCs (know your
customer).
They are honest people and all the money
they have invested in this country has
been the result of their work,
all of which is of legal origin, 
from what we know and the documentation
we asked for when we took them on as
clients.
They are all different, but a great
percentage of clients are business
owners or small business owners
who deposited all their savings here for
their retirement.
And when it came time for retirement, or
when they were on the verge of retirement,
they found that they couldn’t collect
these funds, their savings, their life’s
future,
for the coming years, to be able to have
a life without having to work.
Then we also had clients who need the
money for medical treatments.
But we can say that the clients’
suffering, despair, and true helplessness—
It’s not only the fact that the bank was
intervened,
It’s also the complete insecurity that
this situation has created.
When you have a life plan, when these
expectations are broken…
It is as easy as—
Take any person, for example, you: 
you go to the bank tomorrow morning, and
they tell you that you can’t touch your
money,
that they’re doing an investigation for
suspected money laundering,
then they ask you for all the
documentation for this money,
no matter if it’s 10,000 euros, or 100,
000 euros, or 1 million euros, or 90
million euros—
the profile doesn’t matter. 
And also, you don’t know when you’ll have
access to this money.
And you can't go to the authorities,
either.
There's been no proof of any wrongdoing?
No money laundering so far?
Currently, there has been no conviction
for money laundering.
How much money is currently being held up?
I don't know, but it's a lot of money. 
I don't know, I'm just one attorney and I
have about 20 clients…it is the only
certain reference I have.
I don't know, what I do know is that
there are many clients who don't pass
the cut,
I'm managing (some of) those cases…one
has 15 million, another one 10 million,
the other 200 million.
So PricewaterhouseCoopers' job is now
finished, yes?
No,
they are the still here. 
Four years later? 
Yes.
Are they still working on this today? 
Yes. 
What are they doing today? 
Asking for 
stupid things,
justifying that we are money launderers. 
And in this process,
everyone is
guilty 
until proven innocent. 
This was a banking intervention by the
government.
It had never occurred (in Andorra) before.
An organism was created,
that did not previously exist in Andorra.
It was created only for this (BPA) case.
It is called AREB. The Agency of
Resolution of Banking Entities.
On April 2, 2015, 23 days after America's
Section 311, a new law is passed in
Andorra and AREB is formed, with the
purpose of managing the processes of
resolution of banking entities, with its
board of directors appointed by the
Minister of Finance Jordi Cinca, and the
INAF, directed by Maria Cosan.
This entity is given extraordinary powers
never seen before.
One of the chief architects of the new
and Andorran law that created AREB
was Xavier Espot, Andorra's Minister of
Justice at this time, who today is the
elected president of Andorra.
There are two key moments in which Xavier
Espot took part, or had responsibilities
in the crisis caused by the BPA
intervention.
First, hours before the FinCEN notice was
released,
his family withdrew money from BPA—90
thousand euros to be specific—in the
hours before the notice was published.
Which makes it evident that he knew, and
his family knew, what the FinCEN letter
was going to produce.
And then there was also a decisive action
by Xavier Espot with the passing
of the law that created the Agency for
the Resolution of Banking Entities, or
“AREB law”,
or “BPA law”, as it is known.
But it was manipulated.
A very clear manipulation, because the
2014 European directive states that when
a banking crisis occurs, all shareholders
are affected.
But in the law that the Andorran
government and the Andorran parliament
approved,
they changed it and established that only
shareholders who had more than 10% of the
capital would be affected by this measure.
This is important because the family of
the then-Minister of the Interior and
Justice,
now head of the Andorran government, the
aforementioned Xavier Espot,
were minority shareholders of BPA. 
After then-Minister of Justice Xavier
Espot manipulated the AREB law, his
family were allowed to keep all of their
cash deposits at BPA,
while the majority shareholders and
founders of BPA and Banco Madrid, Ramon
and Higini .
Cierco, locally known as Cierco brothers,
watched all of their cash
deposits vanish, as did many members of
BPA's general management. Not only were
Xavier Espot's family the second largest
shareholders of BPA,
they are a very wealthy family that owns
a chain of 70 luxury cosmetic stores
across Spain and Andorra, Julia Perfumery,
who were also named in the Panama papers. 
AREB begins plans to create a good bank,
to place what PricewaterhouseCoopers has
deemed as legitimate assets segregated
from BPA, with plans to immediately sell
the new bank
once it's set up. 
June 17, 2015--3 months after America's
Section
311, AREB creates Vall Banc as its new
good bank where 67.6% of BPA's deposits
are safely placed, with the remaining 32.
4% being placed into what is locally
referred to as the "BPA
tomb". Two days later Andorra's co-prince,
the Prime Minister of France travels to
Andorra for the first time in history.
On the subject of BPA,
the reaction was quick and thoughtful,
in order to isolate the contaminated bank. 
Followed in December by Andorra's other
co-prince, from Spain.
Andorra in this year, 2015, 
has experienced its own fragility. 
Our country was given the chance to see
who its friends are,
and who couldn’t be considered as such. 
I like to remind people that not being
corrupt begins with oneself, with me,
with each one of us.
It’s incredible!
 It is absolutely scandalous. 
The bishop was complicit 
you know soloist. 
And not only this, the bishop has
accounts in the Andorran banking system.
The bishop has received money from
Andorran banks.
And this is a serious condemnation of the
Vatican.
Also at this time,
the Cierco brother begin engaging in a
multi-year legal battle
with the United States Treasury and
FinCEN, even addressing the director of
FinCEN herself, Jennifer Calvery.
Our view was then, and is still my view
now, that a great injustice
was done to these folks. 
BPA was 
one of the good ones, The moment the
Section 311 notice was issued that
had the intent and effect 
of all U.S, banks saying we will no
longer clear dollars, and when an
international bank can no longer clear
dollars,
they're done. 
They weren't questioned, 
they weren't asked, they weren't given 
a day to explain themselves,
it just happened, and overnight
they were shut down. 
You have a chance to respond. 
But by the time you respond, 
you've been out of business for a week,
two weeks, three weeks, a month,
and no U.S. bank will deal with you, 
and you're finished. And again, you say,
well,
how can you expropriate a bank? Section
311 of the
Patriot Act allows them to do it. 
We challenged that, we said there must
be-- there must be some way to say no,
no, you've gotten it wrong here,
let's get this sorted out,
but of course it behooves the Treasury to
run out the clock
because the longer that a bank stays 
without the ability to operate, the less
chance there is
to reinstate it, and it goes down to the
vanishing point very quickly.
Later on,
when the family owner of the bank 
was 
going to lawyers in the United States,
trying to get justice from this operation,
FinCEN,
exceptionally,
withdrew the measure and the accusation
against BPA.
February 19, 2016--FinCEN withdraws its
finding under Section 311 regarding
Banca Privada
d'Andorra as BPA "no longer operates in a
manner that poses a threat to the U.S.
financial system".
Less than one year after issuing the
notice,
FinCEN withdraws the notice.
The notice has been withdrawn quicker
than any Section 311 notice in the whole
history of FinCEN.
Establishing a record. 
This is very strange. 
This is very strange. The fact was that
the petition to the court
was to get 
the document or the information 
that 
conducted 
FinCEN to take this strong decision. 
And the judge 
said well, if FinCEN withdraws the
measure,
there is no documents required. 
If it is withdrawn, there is no
accusation,
no guiltiness, and you can go away. 
Yes, but--we are dead. You had in your
hands a knife.
you killed me, 
but then 
you take the knife out of my body and say,
well, no, no, the knife is here, if you
die, that's up to you.
It was a strategic maneuver to
essentially take away
the notice that was the trigger, that
gave us a right to respond. And so it
was a truly arbitrary use of power that
was unreviewable, to shut down a bank
without any meaningful ability to go
forward. And so
we ended up where the U.S. Government
coordinated with
another country, 
made a victim of a private bank, shut it
down, made it unable to
come back to life,
sold the assets for a pittance to a U.S. 
entity called J.C. Flowers. 
Chris, 
you have a history of buying cheap assets
in crisis times.
We do try to by banks in times of crisis,
but we have mostly stuck to the mature
markets, not the emerging market. That
has its own level of colorful risk,
which might be too colorful for us.
April 21, 2016--13 months after America's
Section 311. American
private equity firm J.C. Flowers
purchases Vall Banc.
Good morning, my name is Ferran Sicart.
I'm an economist and founder of a
company called Tracis.
We were in charge of analyzing some of the
specific economic aspects of
the operations set up around 
BPA and the bridge bank created to
resolve in the situation. 
At the end of the day,
it's amazing! It's amazing!
In one of the most convoluted, confusing,
yet clever displays of sheer economic
gymnastics,
a story that by itself deserves its own
feature documentary, J.C. Flowers
purchased Vall Banc, a business valued
at 119 million euros, from the
government of Andorra
for only 16.6 million euros. 
To simplify the 
details of this transaction, the sale
price of Val Bank was 29.8 million euros,
but J.C. Flowers paid 3.8 million euros.
The convertible bonds or shares of common
stock in the bank were valued at 70
million euros, but J.C. Flowers paid 12.
8 million euros, meaning
that J.C. Flowers acquired an existing
profitable international business at an
astounding 86% discount.
What does this mean?
That, well, 
they made a very big profit, a very, very
big one. When I--
when I say "they" I mean J.C. Flowers. 
Have you ever seen anything like this in
your career?
No, no. 
No. 
I am 73 years old 
and 
I have never seen-- 
and 
I even cannot imagine--something like
this.
The owners, the original owners (Cierco
brothers)
of the BPA lost everything with the sale
of the bank to J.C. Flowers.
And so 
you are 
spending time and effort and money 
to do an autopsy, 
not to try and do a cure 
for what's happened. 
America's actual Section 311 notice
against BPA claimed that BPA had
facilitated transactions involving the
proceeds of organized crime,corruption,
human trafficking, and fraud for the
Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, the country
of Venezuela, Russian criminal
organizations, and companies and China.
The entire scope of America's allegation
that BPA was laundering money for the
Chinese related to a Chinese businessman
named Gao Ping. Gao Ping immigrated from
China to Spain in the 1990s and rose
from a small-time cook in a Chinese
restaurant to becoming a big-time
multi-million euro businessman and art
dealer. 
He initially built his fortune by
importing Chinese leather products into
Spain and then reselling the products
for cash. In 2012, more than two years
before America's Section 311, Gao Ping
and dozens more were arrested in Spain
in one of the biggest tax evasion
operations in Spanish history.
Gao Ping is not a client  of Andorra, he
has never come to Andorra, and we have
never seen him.
Gao Ping's only relationship Andorra
banking was through one of his
high-ranking managers, Rafael Pallardó,
who was also arrested in 2012.
In fact Rafael Pallardó
had multiple bank accounts linked to Gao
Ping in Andorra,
not just BPA. 
Rafa Pallardó,
he travels frequently to China,
he buys
factories to China, and he buys 
belts, bags, leather products, and things
like that,
and sells 
them in Barcelona. As BPA's head of
compliance, Isabel requested proof that
this operation was a fully legitimate
business.
And we started working, with cash
deposits,
but not too much. Cash deposits were 
very, very common in Andorra in that
moment.
Gao Ping was committing tax fraud in
Spain by depositing cash in Andorran
banks. His operation started with Rafael
Pallardó driving with cash from Spain
into Andorra to deposit into his bank
accounts. From there, bank wires from
Pallardó's
accounts would be sent to China to pay
for more products to be shipped back to
Spain to be sold.
But in two years 
the cash increases a lot.
It was in 2008. All the businesses are
doing
really, really bad, and you are doing
really good?
While the world was dealing with the
aftermath of the 2008 banking crisis,
Rafael Pallardó began expanding this
operation by granting large amounts of
cash from Gao Ping's business to anyone
in Spain who needed quick cash on hand,
in exchange for an immediate bank wire
reimbursement between bank accounts in
Andorra. 
The economy was in crisis. 
So what
a lot of people did is to say okay,
I have this 
half a million euros 
offshore. 
I need that money 
right now just to pay salaries and to pay
staff. And since the Spanish police
knew this, 
they were at the border just controlling
basically every car,
and that's why they appreciated so much
this system.
We are not so comfortable. 
We are getting something like 15 euros per 
transfer, and we are assuming a lot of
risk with the cash.
We had just bought Banco Madrid. 
BPA was aware
they couldn't continue working with
Spanish customers who were intentionally
evading Spanish taxes while BPA was
simultaneously operating a bank on
Spanish soil.
And for this reason, we stopped the
operation in 2011. 2011.
FinCEN note?
March 2015. 
Incredible. When the FinCEN note appears,
you say, "This?"
This? This is prehistoric. This is past, 
very past. 
To summarize, BPA opens an account for
Rafael Pallardó in 2008. BPA fires him
as a client and closes his bank account
in 2011. More than one year later,
Rafael Pallardó is arrested alongside
Gao Ping for tax fraud in 2012, three
years before America's Section 311, But
that's not the interesting
part. Shortly after BPA fired Rafael
Pallardó as a client in 2011, Gao Ping
asked him to set up a fake meeting with
one of Gao Ping's partners, Yong Jun
Yang, luring two BPA employees into
Yang's office in Madrid, pretending to
see about opening a new bank account at
BPA, then trying to trick BPA employees
into admitting something Gao Ping could
use against them. All while a hidden
camera was recording the entire meeting.
Oblivious to what was happening, BPA
refused to open a bank account for Mr.
Yang. Gao Ping tried to use this tape in
a failed extortion attempt against BPA
by threatening to go to the media with
this tape if BPA didn't take Rafael
Pallardó back as their client.
Rafael Pallardó is very afraid of the
Chinese.
And they record them. And then, Rafa came
to Andorra and asked the BPA commercial
department,
okay,
we have a recording
that says "that", so you are not going to
stop us.
And we say, okay, 
forget about it. 
If we decide to stop you, we are going to
stop you. For us,
It's not a problem,
where are you going with this? 
We didn't make any drama of it. 
This video recorded in 2011 was
discovered on a USB drive by Spanish
police during their massive Gao Ping
tax evasion arrests in 2012.
The video wasn't made public until 2015.
March 17, 2015--one week after America's
Section 311. An edited version of Gao
Ping's failed extortion video suddenly
appears on national Spanish media as
proof that BPA was laundering money for
the Chinese.
On the right side of the table is Yong
Jun Yang, Gao Ping's man.
On the left is BPA manager Mauricio
Escribano, and a Chinese employee of the
bank.
The negotiation begins, and for Yang, the
first task is to make matters clear.
Yang: “That’s like money laundering,
isn’t it?”
Once clarified, they talk about amounts.
Gao Ping's business generates a lot of
cash.
BPA: "Tell me what amount, per month,
would be your goal to channel in."
“Easily 100 million euro…easily.”
BPA: “But…monthly?” Yang: “Yeah, easily.”
Remember when BPA's CEO, Joan Pau Miquel
Prats, was arrested just 72 hours after
America's Section 311, and held in
prison for two years without charges?
Well, the reason for Joan Pau's arrest
was because Spanish police threw Rafael
Pallardó in the back of a Spanish police
car, drove him across the border to
Andorra, and forced Rafael to give false
testimony in front of an Andorran judge
against Joan Pau Miquel Prats, leading
to his
arrest. 
Rafael Pallardó's only physical evidence
against Joan Pau Miquel Prats was one of
Rafael's own handwritten cash for wire
transfer agendas with the partial name
"Joan Pau". Rafael later admits that
Spanish police forced him to falsify his
testimony, yet Joan Pau Miquel Prats
remains in Andorran custody for two years
anyway. He continues to stand by his
story, claiming,
"I have been a puppet of the prosecutor
and the court, who have used me to
justify the intervention of the bank".
But in the same agenda figures the name
of some other persons
in some other banks in Andorra, 
which should be 
also in jail 
if the case is the same-- 
and 
are not. 
And never have been.
According to reports from the Andorran
police department, scores of people were
taking advantage of Rafael Pallardó's
cash for wire transfer service, ranging
from famed porno actor Nacho Vidal, to
the family of Andorra's Minister of
Justice,
Xavier Espot, Andorra's 2019 elected
president and head of government.
And in our case, 
everybody is processed, someone's in
prison,
and in the other case nothing happened,
and the case does not advance.
Why not?
On the one hand the police is saying 
the bank is hiding this, 
and on the other hand is saying thank you
very much,
Mr. 
Bank, because if it wasn't because of
your records,
we wouldn't have been able to
cross-reference all the transactions.
It was like, 
I mean--
Andorra had five banks at this time:
Andbank, Credit Andorra, MoraBanc,
BancSabadell d'Andorra, and BPA. Four of
Andorra's five banks were engaging in
identical operations for Gao Ping
through Rafael Pallardó,
but only BPA was intervened. 
They did the same operation with Gao Ping. 
Exactly the same 
operations, exactly. 
They always worked 
with euros. 
Never, 
did they make any transfers 
or did BPA receive
cash 
in U.S.
dollars. 
So 
this means that the American authorities,
FinCEN, and the
American correspondent banks,
they couldn't know 
the existence 
of this operation. 
It means that the information 
about this
client
came from Spain. 
America's Section 311, alleging that BPA
was laundering money for the Russians,
focuses on a man named Andrey Petrov.
Exactly how Rafael Pallardó was Gao
Ping's handler,
Mr. 
Andrey Petrov was a handler for a former
decorated Russian army general, winner
of the Science and Technology State
prize for the Russian Federation, and
acting CEO of a company responsible for
cleaning and repairing all of Russia's
oil pipelines,
Mr. Viktor
Kanaykin.
We know that this 
is a very important person in Russia, has
a lot of money,
so he put some money here. 
It's not uncommon for a man as wealthy as
Viktor Kanaykin, a public figure living
and working in Russia, to place their
money offshore in hopes of discouraging
a kidnapping or other potential security
risks.
So that was a client with a dossier like
this--
for me, 
it was so clear 
that that client was doing nothing 
wrong. 
Viktor Kanaykin's activity consisted of
two transfers from a bank in Latvia to
BPA.  One in 2003 for 20 million euros,
and another in 2007 for 30 million euros,
under the company name DDC lLmited.
The money came from his own company. 
It's a transfer from one pocket to
another pocket.
Changed the country,
nothing else. 
We are not selling, we are not buying, we
are not making any business.
I just have my money here,
and I want to change this to another
country.
Upon the 30 million euros deposit in 2007,
BPA contacted the Latvian bank to
confirm the standing of Viktor Kanaykin
and DDC Limited to confirm the standing
of Viktor Kanaykin and DDC Limited.
The following year, BPA commissioned
Kroll, a compliance risk and diligence
firm headquartered in New York City, to
independently audit Viktor Kanaykin's
activity for anti-money laundering and
corruption.
Petrov opened an account here in in
Andorra, and gets the money from the
account of
Viktor to the account of Petrov.
That's all. It was his salary. For me,
for compliance, Andrey Petrov was not
significant.
January 2013--2 years before America's
Section 311 against BPA.
Andrey Petrov is arrested by Spanish
police for corruption and tax evasion
crimes that are completely unrelated to
Viktor Kanaykin.
However, more than two years later on
March 23, 2015, 13 days after America's
Section 311 against BPA, the Spanish
media suddenly releases a series of
claims linking Viktor Kanaykin to Andrey
Petrov's criminal activities. Spanish
media also claimed that two executives
from BPA traveled to Moscow to visit
Viktor Kanaykin
in person, with one of those executives
being Santiago Rosselló.
Which was true, as it was Santi's job as
financial director of BPA to closely
monitor and periodically visit a client
as big as Viktor Kanaykin. The Spanish
media also reports that the other BPA
executive on this Moscow trip was Pablo
Laplana, publishing that he had been
arrested nine months earlier by Andorran
police for laundering drug money.
The Spanish police is lying when they say
that I went to Russia. The Spanish police
is lying
when they say that I stayed in such and
such hotel. Lying when they said that I
picked up my passport at the Barcelona
airport.
All those are lies. 
Two days after this was published, the
law firm of Eric Lewis wrote this
Spanish newspaper requesting the removal
of these defamatory claims, as well as a
retraction
proving 
he did not go to Russia and was never
implicated in drug money laundering. Yet
to this day ABC Spain has refused to edit
this article, even though they are
completely aware that this article is a
humongous lie.
It was coordinated. FinCEN issues the
notice against BPA,
and suddenly 
all these these articles about BPA, about
myself, about everything, just is there.
This was planned. While Spanish police
were arresting Andrey Petrov in January
2013,
s.omething else was being coordinated. 
The police called me 
"Hey, hi, Isabel,
it's the police. 
I have an account that has to be locked
today."
It was a 
Friday night. 
I said, okay. 
I'm having dinner with my with my husband
at the restaurant.
"No, no, no, we have to lock it now," I
say,
the bank is closed, 
nothing is going to happen until Monday. 
"No, no, Isabel, you have to go to the
bank and you have to lock it right now."
Okay, bring me the 
notice to the to the restaurant. 
He came to the restaurant. 
I was having dinner 
and I open the the envelope and I see--I
sign and I see Viktor Kanaykin--
the Russian.
Oh my God--
I remember that customer because it was a
big customer. And
when the police left, 
I take the phone 
and I called 
Santi. 
My phone: when the
Russian client, Andrey Petrov, was placed
in jail in January 2013,
my phone was being tapped,
and 
all my conversations were recorded 
for one month. 
I didn't know. 
And I say, "Hi,
Santi,
Isabel here. 
The police have come, they have locked
Viktor Kanaykin's account,
Andrey Petrov's boss.
Santi says, what? 
That's not possible. He's a businessman,
we have everything. 
Yes. 
I'm sure that we have everything perfect
in that account.
We have nothing to worry because the
account is perfectly documented.
Okay. 
Okay, bye-bye. 
Once we knew this,
we offered that I present myself to the
international court, saying we don't
understand what happened with me,
if I can
explain what you need, I will come to the
Spanish court to explain
whatever you like. 
They say, "No, don't worry. 
You're not 
relevant in the case 
and you are not a part of the case."
This is in 2013. 
When in 2015 we had the intervention of
BPA, Spain then decides to resurrect
this case. Santi was suddenly facing a
year in jail and 300,000 euros in fines
if convicted. 
The police 
make the interpretation of the the
conversation. Clearly both of them know
what's happening, and they are saying
that everything is perfect because they
know that we were recording them, and
they want to hide that there is
something wrong.
That was the police interpretation 
of my conversation 
with Santi. 
Santi's case finally made it to court in
October 2018, only to be immediately
acquitted.
Because there was no case. 
It was not appealed by the prosecutor. 
So it's firm. 
This is absolution. 
I know that Petrov 
also has an account in Andbank. 
According to Andorran police reports
showing records dating as far back as
2007, Andrey Petrov was also using
Andbank for his activities, with more
than three-quarters of a million euros
in deposits. Yet
no action has ever been taken against
Andbank or its employees. FinCEN's
Section 311 against BPA also claims that
Andrey Petrov is suspected to have links
to Semion Mogilevich,
one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives. 
This may be the most powerful man
you've never heard of.  His name is
Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mobster.
He has access to so much, including
funding including other criminal
organizations, that he can, with a
telephone call, affect the global economy.
Yet no state agency has produced a shred
of evidence to support a link between
the two men.
One day Santi comes to me and says, hey, 
coordinate a meeting between the new
manager of the international business unit
and 
Mr. 
Petrov. 
I sent an SMS to Petrov. 
I have never seen him before,
I have never interacted with him before,
and because of that SMS, the Spanish
police tapped my phone.
While Santi was a lead manager for BPA's
Russian clients involved in America's
Section 311, Pablo was a lead manager
for BPA's Venezuelan clients involved in
America's Section 311.
America's FinCEN alleges that a money
laundering network engaged in a wide
variety of business for illicit profit,
connected to Venezuelan government
officials, including Venezuela's public
oil company PDVSA, the owner of Citgo at
the time.
PDVSA as such never sent money to BPA and
this is something
that blows my mind 
when they when I read the notice of
FinCEN, because
you won't find any single transaction
sent from PDVSA to BPA.
While manufacturing the story that BPA
was laundering money for the Venezuelans,
The Spanish police had to get really
creative. During this national Spanish
news broadcast that aired on April 7,
2015, a month after America's Section 311,
the audience was told that the Spanish
police had been tapping the phones of
BPA executives while trying to follow
the Russian mafia, but suddenly the
Venezuelans just happened to appear on
the scene,
so Spanish police started tapping the
phones related to BPA's Venezuelan
clients. Even though Spain's police were
tapping phones inside Andorra, the
Spanish police had no jurisdiction to
intervene in a case between Venezuela
and Andorra, and this is where America's
FinCEN came in.
Spanish police
then presented to America's FinCEN
evidence of money laundering at BPA for
all the clients mentioned in America's
Section 311, including Venezuela, thus
resulting in America shutting down BPA
and Banco Madrid.
The first 
time I saw a conversation of mine was 
in a newspaper. I read it.  And the
transcription was so wrong.
But the next wave 
that shocked me was when I started to
hear them, to see in the in the
television, to hear my conversations.
During this same April 7, 2015 broadcast,
Spanish media started playing
Pablo Laplana's re-edited phone
conversations on national television as
proof that BPA was laundering money for
the Venezuelans. Pablo
Laplana had no idea
his phone was being recorded in 2013
until he watched and heard his own
re-edited phone conversations broadcast
live on national Spanish TV in April
2015, two years later, perfectly
coinciding with America's Section 311
against BPA.
It's very frustrating 
when they are lying 
and you say, "But I can prove that that's
not true!"
But you can't. 
Pablo immediately hired an attorney and
took this case to court in May of 2015,
just weeks after the first broadcast.
His attorney presented diagrams to the
court showing how his conversations had
been highly manipulated when aired, but
no retractions were ordered, and the
Spanish justice
system did nothing to remedy the
situation.
When you're watching, when you're hearing
your
conversations, and you
see that those have been edited,
I can't describe, I can't find the words, 
to describe the level of frustration and
anger that that generates.
With Venezuela,
there were two types of business, 
one dealt with insurance companies. 
BPA's Venezuelan clients consisted partly
of International Insurance brokers who
shopped for reinsurers, like Guy
Carpenter or Lloyd's of London, to
insure various national businesses in
Venezuela.
And the other worked with Chinese
companies. These clients also brokered
deals to build factories in Venezuela
using Chinese technology, as well as
importing wholesale vehicles from China
for retail in Venezuela.
It's a commercial operation.
We get the money in Andorra from the
company with the tax deductions, with
everything.
Publicly released Andorran court
documents redacted the names of the
numerous Venezuelan clients of BPA,
but they did list the other Banks they
were working with, with these banks
depositing 90% of the Venezuelan;
capital into BPA, with this list of
banks that the Venezuelans had wired
most of its money to. Yet 
no bank in this list was ever
investigated or had a Section 311 placed
against them.
In the case of the Venezuelans it’s very
odd, because they are people who don’t
live in Venezuela,
and what’s more, they don’t have any role
in Venezuelan political life.
They’ve fled from Venezuela. They’re not
aligned with Maduro.
It’s very hard to understand that this
[money laundering] would be the case
This case was under 
vigilance
of the unit of financial investigation 
in Andorra.
They considered 
(the Venezuelans') activity 
suspicious. 
When we were asked by these clients to
withdraw 50 million dollars away from
the bank,
we advised, and they immediately said, 
"No, no, block the money!"  And then the
person in charge
took the case to court
and accused these people (the Venezuelans)
of money laundering. 
In November 2012, more than two years
before America's Section 311, the
blocking of Venezuelan assets at BPA for
this alleged money laundering went to
trial in Andorra.
The court's final decision was to lift
and void this imposed block, finding no
wrongdoing.
The general attorney
was not confident with this decision 
and asked to investigate it again. 
This case was then escalated to a higher
Andorran court, dated July of 2014,
eight months before America's Section
311. Still without having provided
sufficient evidence of crime or money
laundering.
The money was finally delivered, but not
all (of the money); they still left some
money in the bank.
They were innocent. 
Josep Anton Silvestre was one of the
local Andorran attorneys representing
the Venezuelans in this case.
The judge and the court,
the highest court, says there is no proof
that the Venezuelans were laundering
money,
and unfreeze all the accounts.
After this, me and the other lawyer,
received the 
payment for our services. 
After that, 
came the 
FinCEN notice, 
which talks about the Venezuelan citizens. 
And they freeze, again, the accounts.
With all the process regarding
anti-money laundering of
BPA, 
they looked at my account 
and the account of the other lawyer and
said, "hey,
what's this amount?" 
This amount came from the Venezuelans 
when the judge
unfroze their accounts.
And they say, "Ah, okay,
you are laundering."
"You are making laundering of money."
Are you crazy? 
It's the judge
who unfreeze! It's the judge who says
there is no proof!
In Andorra, 
to be a lawyer is a risky profession. 
This is human rights attorney and partner
of the European Center for Constitutional
and Human Rights, Gonzalo Boye, who has
been representing Josep Anton.
The judge 
who released the money, 
before the FinCEN note,
is the same judge, 
is the same 
person, 
the same human being, 
that is charging Silvestre and the others
lawyers
for money laundering, out of the money
that she has declared is clean money.
So at the end of the day, 
you don't know what to do. 
I mean, you win a case,
out of that case you're paid, 
and you end up in a worse situation than
the client that you acquitted.
After that, they started a case against
me, and against my wife,
because she is co-owner 
of the account. 
I think this is a 
process to make fear 
to the lawyers. 
All my money 
in BPA, all my money from all my career,
was freezed.
Everything. 
I lost everything. I start from zero. 
I'm upset. 
Together
they are currently seeking the attention
of the United Nations, demonstrating
massive human rights violations within
the country of Andorra.
If you don't know how to manage a case,
you indict the lawyer.
That's the problem in Andorra.
And finally, the fourth case in America's
Section 311 alleges that BPA worked with
the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico and
facilitated the transfer of bulk cash
derived from narcotics trafficking in
the United States.
This would mean that the Sinaloa drug
cartel, after being cut off from HSBC in
the United States for doing this exact
same thing, with no Section 311 being
ordered against HSBC, would now manage
to somehow transport huge amounts of
cash by boat or plane from
the United States to Andorra, to then
deposit into BPA.
It's possible that FinCEN is 
too stupid 
to put this case 
in the 
note?
We never found a single indicator
whatever, nor has anyone pointed to one,
that had anything to do with the Sinaloa
cartel or anybody else, and there's
nothing that even sniffs at that.
That's that's what we found. 
And now when we have been 
in the U.S.,
through all the different courts,
and we arrived to the end,
One of the judges asked the 
prosecutor representing FinCEN,
they said, "Well, have you shown any
proofs?"
And all she can respond is that "we have 
issued 
a statement about this" and the judge
asks her again, 
"Listen, in this process, 
at any instance, from the beginning. 
have you shown 
any proofs 
of the charges
that you have against BPA that has
justified
the intervention of the bank?"
She says well, what we have done is
issued....and he gets upset
and said, listen, 
have you or have you not 
shown any proofs?
And she has nothing to say because he is
upset already at this point.
He said, "no, your honor." 
That's where we are. 
They're building everything based on the
criminal credibility of FinCEN,
not on evidence. 
Because if they could have gotten
evidence, this case will be in the U.S.--
In a U.S. court 
and not in an Andorran court. 
I mean, the whole Andorran judicial
system,
You can put it into one courtroom in New
York.
Why did you choose this to do it? 
Because you don't have a case. 
It was the time of the U.S. 
being very 
careful and watchful of what was going on
in Venezuela, and with the Russians, so
they put the spices to make it all
tasteful and appealing to the U.S.
government,
to say, let's go for this.
Plus,
this is a small country, 
no strategic interest whatsoever, a small
bank, so no one is really going to
complain about this.
We have political and strategic interest
in
getting along with the Spanish. 
They may not 
fully believe the Spanish,
but let's 
just go along with them, 
go with the flow, let's make them happy. 
So you've got two countries coordinating
but they're basically coordinating to
deprive innocent folks from being able
to have a meaningful remedy.
It's troubling; it should be troubling to
everybody, and that it could happen to
anyone, anywhere, And the banks are not
going to fight, and the foreign
regulators aren't going to fight. They
didn't fight for their bank.
They decided that they would circle the
wagons around the other
banks
and do the U.S.' bidding. 
The penalty would be borne 
by 
the Catalans 
in their midst. 
The penalty would be borne by 
the Catalans 
in their midst. 
By now you are likely asking yourself,
Why? 
What would be the motivation for Andorra
and Spain to justify framing BPA for
money laundering, intentionally
destroying the bank and countless lives
in the process?
It's got a name: 
Lawfare.
That's the reality. 
Everything that's behind
this issue is lawfare.
It's a war with other means 
which is 
using 
legal tools 
within the
legal system 
to destroy the enemies
in a way that appears to be legal. 
So they explored the the contradictions
of the law and they used the legal
system--why? Because normally,
in each country, the judicial system
doesn't have a counterpower.
Counterpower, or checks and balances. 
And what has happened in Andorra is
exactly the same.
They wanted to protect the bank, who
was convenient for them, and they want to
destroy another. Why this other bank, BPA,
was not convenient? Because they didn't
want to play along
in certain things that were important
both for Andorra and also for Spain,
which was the campaign to destroy 
the Catalan Movement.
For me it was not a surprise, because we
we know perfectly how 
the Spanish state acts or reacts 
when Spain feels threatened by someone. 
It is a former empire. 
As a former empire 
made by violence and genocide, 
he (Spain) has no limits. 
And he (Spain) has a sense of power 
linked to the concept of impunity. 
It doesn't matter if Andorra is an
independent and sovereign state.
The Spanish Police could act inside the
Spanish state and also in Andorra. So
for us it was not
a surprise to discover 
the dark side of the Spanish state is
acting against Catalan interests.
Spain consists of 17 regions, the most
famous being Madrid, Spain's ruling
capital, and Catalonia, where Barcelona
is located. These two regions have been
in bitter conflict for centuries.
During the 18th century Spain tried to
eliminate the Catalan language and
introduce the Spanish language, dthrough
the administration,
the public administration, 
and through the laws, and through the
schools, because at this time during two
centuries,
the Catalan language was forbidden in the
school
During that time for instance the papers
in Catalan were forbidden, in the
broadcasting Catalan was forbidden, and
the television--under dictator Francisco
Franco--it was forbidden.
The Spanish language was first imposed on
the the Catalan people nearly 300 years
ago, even though most spoke only Catalan,
successive Spanish government's launched
decree after decree to weaken the use of
the Catalan language. In 1881
it was banned on legal documents. In 1896,
in public meetings
and on the telephone. In 1900, in the
theater.
in 1939, when Francisco Franco came to
power it was banned absolutely everywhere.
People caught speaking in Catalan were
arrested and severely beaten.
Speaking or even reading a book in
Catalan in public places was considered
a direct protest against Franco's
long-running fascist regime, a regime
that has left Spain second only to
Cambodia for the highest number of
missing persons.
You had a fascist dictator, Francisco
Franco, in Spain, and you had this
fascist dictator Hitler
in Germany. 
When that (Hitler) resolved, there were
trials, there was a conclusion to that,
and there was no conclusion (with Franco).
Anything you want to say in that regard? 
Yes, yes.
It was a fake. 
The Spanish transition to democracy was a
fake.
Because, first, Franco is dead in a bed
as a head of state.
No revolution.
No process against fascists
has 
removed 
Franco from power 
but biology. 
Since the death of Francisco Franco in
1975, the ghost of his fascist ideals
remain prominent in Spain to this day.
With the continued repression of
Catalonia taking center stage.
Ever since I was a little girl, I've been
seeing these differences. I would go to
the supermarket and I would find an
elderly woman speaking in Spanish with
her grandchild, telling them in Spanish,
"Don't buy this, this is Catalan".
And I would think, 
you are living in Catalonia. 
How can you say that? 
How can you be opposing a product that's
made in this land?
This has nothing to do with politics. 
I have traveled a lot in Spain 
since I was a little kid, 
and I would find people insulting me and
my sister for speaking in Catalan with
each other.
They would come to us and say, you are in
Spain,
you should speak Spanish. Very 
ugly situations and very uncomfortable
situations, and I've been encountering
this my entire life.
The first Catalonian statute of autonomy
was passed by the Spanish parliament in
1932 after Catalonia held a public vote,
or referendum, with 99% of Catalonians
voting in favor of this statute.
But seven years later, once Francisco
Franco took power,
this statute was abolished, resulting in
four decades of repression and bloodshed
against the Catalonian people
After Franco died
in 1975, another statute of autonomy was
drafted and passed in 1979,
but it granted Catalonia only limited
autonomy. From 1980 to 2003,
President Jordi Pujol dedicated his
presidency to Catalonia's right to self
governance, and gave birth to what is
known today as the Catalonian
independence movement.
When Pujol stepped down in 2003, a 
new government in 
Catalonia appeared. The main 
goal of that new government was to
develop a new statute of autonomy for
the country.
I was the head of the opposition at that
time in the Catalan Parliament.
I was fully involved in this 
political operation. 
And then I personally negotiated with
President Zapatero, at that time the
Spanish prime minister.
I negotiated with him the statute
of autonomy and we reached an agreement,
and that agreement was transformed in a
Spanish law,
approved in the Spanish Parliament by an
absolute majority.
Then that law was sent to Catalonia, 
and in Catalonia
there was a binding referendum 
and the outcome of the referendum was 74%
of the yes vote.
So the statute of autonomy, the new
statute of autonomy,
was OKed. 
And four years after that, in 2010, 
the Spanish Constitutional Court struck
down
the main articles of the new statute of
autonomy in Catalonia,
that had been previously 
approved in a binding referendum 
by 
the people. 
One of the members of the 
judges 
of the Constitutional Court, which is the
top, the ones that said, it doesn't
matter what the people have decided,
it doesn't matter what the Parliament
says, this cannot happen.
He came to New York 
because he and his wife were 
very close friends to 
one my in-laws.
At home-- 
we had breakfast at home--
I said, 
Why all this? Why don't we try? 
And he told me, 
Miguel, you and the Catalans make the
money,
but don't forget, Spain is run from
Madrid.
In 2012, 2013, 
there were in Catalonia and in Barcelona,
specifically,
huge demonstrations. More than 1.5
million people in the streets
asking for a referendum. And this is what
I tried
to negotiate with President Rajoy, at
that time the Spanish Prime Minister.
And the answer of President Rajoy was
always the same: there is nothing to
talk about. My position was, if you look
at what is really happening in Catalonia
and you see in a consolidated democracy
that more than 1.5 million people are in
the streets asking for a
referendum, 
your answer is there is nothing to talk
about?
in November 2014, President Artur Mas
decided to hold a non-binding symbolic
referendum, not an actual referendum,
the equivalent of taking an opinion poll
of the Catalonian population for
self-autonomy.
80% of voter turnout voted in favor of
independence.
Back in Madrid, President 
Mariano Rajoy's government responded by
convicting President Artur Mas of civil
disobedience, and banned him from
holding public office for two years, and
fined his party nearly five million euros.
Mayor of Girona, Carlos Puigdemont, has
been voted in as the new president of
Catalonia.
The move puts the northeastern region
back on the road to secession from Spain
after months of political deadlock and
waning support in his predecessor Artur
Mas.
We are a minority, a national minority in
Spain. We are only 16% of the Spanish
population.
So 
we have no 
power enough 
to be 
respected in
our decisions because 
we are a minority. 
So 
the only tool in the international laws
that protect minorities is
the right of self-determination. 
And the only way to achieve that is to be
independent.
In October 2017, President Carles
Puigdemont authorized a binding
referendum for Catalonia's independence.
There are a lot of people in Catalonia
who don't want independence, but they
want to vote.
And then they want to decide together with
the others
their future. And what I saw that day.
And what I see also in my remembrances
that day,
there is only one word: hope. 
Obviously, there was another word:
violence.
Police are breaking their way 
into a building. 
So it looks very clear at this very early
stage in the voting process
that Madrid is not going to let this
happen.
Well here you can see protesters in
Girona in northeastern Catalonia facing
off against officers. Demonstrators have
their hands up in a sign of non-violence
but police apparently started hitting
them with batons.
Another video from Catalonia shows police
jumping on and violently kicking
protesters as well as dragging the
activists out of a polling station,
tossing peaceful voters down stairs 
and striking them with batons and
confiscating ballot boxes.
Catalans lined up to vote, many paying a
high price for it.
Now people are still trying to vote here, 
but we do know that it just two blocks
away
there was there was another polling
station, another building of the school,
that was just a basically raided by
police forces.
That was very disappointing for me, to
discover that Spain has not changed.
I was very sad 
seeing 
the hate 
in the face of Spanish policemen. 
They were activists 
in the name of the unity of Spain. 
They were not worried about the image of
Spain,
that image 
Spain offers to the world 
as an authoritarian state, violent state--
it doesn't matter, all that. 
It was 
also a day of shame for Spain,
and a day 
of shame for Europe. 
I conducted my interview with President
Puigdemont in September 2019 in Belgium,
where he remains in exile, but just four
weeks after my interview
this happened. 
Nine Catalan leaders will spend between
nine and thirteen years behind bars for
their roles in staging an independence
referendum back in 2017. The vast
majority of voters said they were in
favor of breaking from Spain and the
regional Parliament declared Catalonia's
independence, but weeks later Spain
nullified
the independence declaration, dissolved
Catalonia's Parliament, and took direct
control of the region. Spain's Supreme
Court handed down
the sentences Monday after finding the
former leaders guilty of sedition,
thus triggering the worst political
crisis in Spain since the era of Franco.
Angry Catalonians managed to shut down
Barcelona's airports and highway system.
Madrid's repression of Catalonia isn't
just about culture.
It's also about money. According to a
January 2020 Treasury report, in 2015
and 2016 alone, Catalonia contributed to
Spain 33.6 billion euros more than it
received.
So what does Madrid's war with Catalonia
have to do with assassinating a private
bank in Andorra?
Wait until you get a load of this. 
In May of 2014, 
ten months before America's Section 311
against BPA,
BPA CEO Joan Pau Miquel Prats is visited
by the attache to the Spanish Embassy
and Andorra, Celestino Barroso.
Joan Pau Miquel, highly suspicious of
this meeting, decided to record this
conversation with his phone.
I am the bearer of a message from Madrid. 
Yes.
I've been told to inform you: they told
me that the Bank of Spain has an
inspection of Banco Madrid and that they
are going to take it down.
And there's an American bank ready to
take it over when the Bank of Spain ends
it.
But it is up to you to keep things as
they are, to stop the inspection and
keep everything going as it currently is.
As long as you agree to something--I
don't know what it's all about.
Are you the inspector of the Spanish
embassy? Are you a police officer?
Yes, chief inspector of the police. 
Chief inspector of the police, of the
national police--
Yes. I am chief inspector of the police,
the attache of the Ministry of the
Interior. This is a personal mission.
So if I understand, this is an official
visit, or no? Is everything you’re
telling me official?
Let’s leave that in quotation marks. 
And who must I see or interview about
this?
I personally don’t know anything more.
Just this: the Bank of Spain is going to
bring the axe down on Banco Madrid,
and there are some Americans who going to
take over the bank.
All this can be paralyzed, as long as you
agree to do what they’re asking for. It’s
in your hands to stop it. What exactly
they’re going to ask you, I don’t know.
Joan Pau Miquel then traveled to Madrid
for this mystery meeting.
The person meeting him was the head of
internal affairs of the national Spanish
police, Martin Blas.
This is sworn courtroom testimony of what
happened in this meeting.
Judge: In the first meeting at Villa
Magna in Madrid you meet “Felix”, who is
Martin Blas. What exactly did this man
say?
Joan Pau Miquel: He tells me, "listen, I
have to ask you something...
and I want you to pay close attention."
And then he opened a newspaper,
and let me read some text that he put
there.
It said, "The Spanish state is at war
against Catalonia, the nationalism issue
is our priority."
We want you to tell us, and give us any
information you have knowledge of,
regarding the bank accounts of the Mas,
Junqueras, and Pujol families.
That's what he had handwritten and put
before me.
And he closed the newspaper and asked me,
“Have you understood what I’m asking?”
The investigation, led by 
the Spanish government in 
Andorra, trying to find personal accounts
of
President Pujol, 
my accounts, and Vice President Oriol
Junqueras--
in my case, 
well, they failed, because there 
no accounts
in Andorra,
although they thought that they were
there,
but they weren't. 
He said we do not have them as a client,
except for Pujol, but
he could not give any information because
this was not legal, and he could not,
"Well then, if you do not do,
accept the consequences."
This is a coordinated work 
between 
the Spanish police
and the Treasury Department--at least. 
at least. 
I mean, 
there's 
no doubt 
about it.
Because 
one 
highest ranked officer of Guardia Civil
(Spanish police) in Spain...
(Irrelevant dialogue--for identification
only)
went on TV saying this. 
Basilio Sanchez: To inform the Treasury
Department of a serious investigation
against BPA as a bank that favors money
laundering worldwide.
Even themselves, they're admitting what
they did.
Also, this man, Jose Manuel Villarejo,
the former commissioner for the Spanish
police, was also hired to help frame BPA.
Villarejo is a very 
Spanish character. 
I mean, he has been very high 
and now is sitting  in a cell in a prison, 
But Villarejo is a key person, alongside
with other policemen, in what was called
Catalunya Operation, Operation Catalunya,
which is very much related with the
blockage and destroying of BPA. When I'm
saying very high, he was working for the
government.
he was a police officer, but also a
private entrepreneur. He intermediated
in a lot of
complicated situations, 
and when I say complicated situations,
people that were journalists kidnapped
in Syria by
terrorist groups, 
and things like that.
But he was making money out of everything
while he was a civil servant.
And he has admitted several things. 
One of those is that he lied in order to
destroy BPA.
Where are the consequences? Until now we
haven't seen it.
He's got such an amount of information
that if he talks
properly, seriously, clearly, with all
the evidence on the table,
in Spain 
some people will have big, big troubles. 
Even though the ruling government of
Andorra is comprehensively
aware that BPA was framed by Spain and
tricked the U.S. Treasury by presenting
fake evidence, thus fully aware of the
innocence of the managers of BPA,
Andorra's prosecutors are still trying
to imprison BPA''s top managers for
money laundering.
This fake criminal case continues into
2020,
five years after America's Section 311. 
This is 
something 
unbelievable. The first thinking is that
you cannot believe it.
When you wake up every morning 
you say, "Well,
it must be something wrong. 
I 
have not woken up. 
I must still be dreaming because this is
not real."
But when you finally see that it is real, 
then comes a situation in which 
a depression 
faces in 
because 
you you cannot accept that.
And it 
threatens all your 
parts of your life--
your family, 
and 
as I feel,
a lot of companions which are in the same
position.
A lot of them for which I put my hand on
fire.
And
it's impossible that the things that we
are being accused of
are true. 
I have a lot of anger in myself. I know
that this is not good and it's not
healthy,
but I really do I cannot avoid that.
I came to Andorra to work at BPA, in fact.
So I have been living here for more than
20 years.
I'm Andorran now, 
first 
I was Spanish, 
and I feel really, really bad. 
I got the passport--the Andorran
passport--because my children are
Andorran,
my husband is Andorran, and I want to be
all in the in the same country.
But if it's not for that I would 
not get the Andorran passport 
because I feel really betrayed. 
Really betrayed. 
I feel really betrayed from the
Supervisor, from the Justice,.
from everywhere. Because I have been in a
lot of meetings with the Supervisor,
telling that we are doing things right,
that we are working good, 
with the colleagues of other banks saying,
"Okay, Isabel,
please explain me how you do this, 
ok,  
oh, that's a good idea, 
let's make this, let's talk about this", 
and then say that we are money launderers? 
We were working together because we were
very interested in
avoiding money laundering. With the
police,
I have called the police a lot of times 
and we have always been helping them
because we thought that we are on the
right side.
The reputational damage has been so big 
that 
I'm unemployable.
As I said...
no company will hire me at all
because their reputational risk is very
high for that company
and if even-- if you want to start a
business, you will find  that
you will need to get a bank account for
that business and it will be very hard
to do that.
All my money in BPA is still blocked.
You have no access to that money? 
No.
But not only this,
I went to all the 
banks in Andorra
to open an account 
and no bank will allow me to open an
account.
I live from my wife. 
How much money is missing from BPA? Do we
know how much?
From the customers of BPA, from the the
owners
in everything,
maybe 1 billion. 
More than 1 billion. 
Would you say this was like a clever bank
robbery?
Would you call it that? 
I have this feeling.
What do you think would happen if 
someone 
decided to allow everyone who had money
in BPA
to have their money back? 
What do you think would happen? 
There is not enough money at all.
At all. 
There is not enough money. 
If someone 
the Justice, were allowed to redo
everything and everybody get the money
back from BPA, it is not possible
because there will not be enough money to
give back to the customers, 
Which is precisely why the Andorran
justice system needs a guilty verdict.
Andorra has even gone so far as to
publish the names of everyone from BPA
facing
prison on the front page of its largest
newspaper, advertising how long they
will spend in prison and how much they
will be paying in fines when found
guilty. Joan Pau: eight years in prison,
100 million euros in fines. Santiago:
eight years in prison, 70 million euros
in fines. Isabel: seven
years in prison, 70 million euros in
fines. Joan:  six years in prison, 70
million euros. Pablo: six years in
prison, 70 million euros.
You are guilty before trial.  
And because you are guilty before trial,
in 
front of the public opinion, 
the State has the permission, as a law, 
to do all that State 
thinks necessary 
to stop you, 
to prevent your success. 
Not only lawfare, 
but also mediafare.
Andorra is a strange country. Andorra is
a country where things happen that only
happen there.
I don't know if this is going to come
through in the translation but Andorra
is a “shady company”. It’s a farce.
To make matters more absurd, while
Andorra is busy trying to place its own
innocent citizens in prison,
the Andorran government is simultaneously
filing lawsuits against Spain for
extorting and framing BPA for money
laundering.
It is a violation of human rights in the
sense that
Spanish police officers came to Andorra
to take action against Andorran citizens,
which is clearly a violation of Andorran
sovereignty by the Spanish state.
We'll see how the case evolves. We'll see
if they get...
there are now witnesses, Mr. Villarejo
has testified, we will see how the judge
goes about investigating.
I could not get a single member of the
Andorran government to speak to me on
camera about this story, with the
exception of the head of the Andorran
Institute for Human Rights.
This whole theatrical scene that was put
on, performed,
under the pretense that this bank’s
business model
involving handling dirty money—laundered
money--
all of that, more and more, is being
proven to be unfounded.
The truth needs to come out. 
Sooner or later, the true story here will
emerge.
You start with a FinCEN note,
which is a little butterfly,
and on the other side of the world
you have a hurricane
some months later. 
And this is what happened. A little
letter,
with no support, 
very small, 
moved itself a bit, 
and on the other side of the Atlantic was
a proper hurricane
that devastated a bank, families, lawyers, 
and a lot of people. 
Here is not just a 
a matter of money, 
When people are indicted, 
they are under scrutiny, 
they have a social problem. 
Don't forget that Andorra is very little
country.
They were highly respected people and now
they are treated like criminals.
But not only the owners and the managers
of BPA, but also
something very important-- 
the lawyers. Why are
the lawyers important? Because we are the
last line of defense
for many people. 
And if you are criminalized, 
everybody could be criminalized. And
at the end of the day,
you see families destroyed credibilities
destroyed,
a huge cost in defense, 
and people who don't know where they will
be in a year's time.
This case is already five years going on, 
and they don't know when it's going to
come to an end, which will be the result,
because--look.
It's very simple. If you should somebody, 
you know more or less which will be the
result.
But 
if you haven't shot anybody. 
and you are in a process for shooting
somebody you didn't shoot,
the result could be anything. 
So the uncertainty 
is tremendous, and the impact on their
lives and in their feelings and their
families and their kids--because all of
them have kids--
is tremendous. 
And this is part of the devastation 
of a hurricane, created 
with a small butterfly, on the other side
of the Atlantic.
Do you think this will ever be resolved,
this BPA case?
Anything you want to say? 
I think, really, you cannot resolve the
effects
of the hurricane 
without resolving 
what has caused it. And that
is not here,
it's not in Andorra, it is in the U.S.
Remember Jennifer Calvery, the director
of FinCEN?
She not only authorized the Section 311
against BPA, but she is also the one who
negotiated HSBC's 1.9 billion dollar fine
for laundering money for the Sinaloa drug
cartel.
Guess where she is today? Jennifer Shasky
Calvery, who is global head for financial
crime threat mitigation at HSBC.
Remember Jordi Cinca, the blood diamond
smuggler who later became Andorra's
Finance Minister, and how he
commissioned America's
PricewaterhouseCoopers to perform the
BPA customers' audit, six days after
America's Section 311?
In September 2019,
Mr. 
Cinca was to be tapped as the new
director of an Andorran branch of
PricewaterhouseCoopers.
But his position was aborted due to a
"serious reputational problem".
However in January 2020, Jordi Cinca was
appointed head of Andorra's retirement
reserve fund, Andorra's social security
administration, responsible for securing
the Andorran citizens their retirement
money.
While the majority of President Carles
Puigdemont's cabinet still sits in a
Spanish prison,
in January 2020 the European Union,
headquartered in Belgium, has granted
President Carles Puigdemont a seat at
the European Union.
Carles Puigdemont began his mandate as
MEP in Strasbourg,
amid great media expectation. Before
attending the plenary session,
he called on Europe for action and said
Catalonia is no longer an internal
Spanish affair.
So we are here, 
in order to remember, and to 
claim, to to European Union institution
to be involved in a solution based on
dialogue.
Mr. 
Gonzalo Boye is also President 
Puigdemont's attorney. 
I interviewed
Mr. 
Boye in August of 2019, when he
proclaimed this statement.
Sooner or later, 
they will try to indict us for whatever:
money laundering,
or whatever. They will invent it and they
will try it, because at the end it is not
a matter of result, it's a matter of
destroying the person.
And eight weeks later this happened. 
Anyone with money in the Andorran banking
system should consider three problems.
The first is that it has a fractional
reserve banking system, but no central
bank.
There's therefore no one to act as lender
of last resort.
The second problem is that Andorra uses
the euro as a currency, but is not in
fact a member of either the European
Union nor the Eurozone. It therefore has
no access to the European Central Bank
and more importantly it has no method of
printing euros in order to provide
the banks with liquidity. 
And finally, it has a third problem:
deposit insurance.
Andorra has this, up to 100,000 euros per
account, but that lack of a central bank
and that lack of a way to print euros
means that their insurance isn't really
all that much good.
Andorra's annual budget is only 470
million euros while Andorra's banks
collectively manage more than 49 billion
euros,
which is more than 100 times that of
Andorra's annual budget. Andorra's
annual budget doesn't cover half  of
what is supposedly frozen in BPA.
Look--you have to 
keep this Andorran money because I
believe that it's going to disappear.
