Valencia PP speaker to be probed over Bankia loans

Nationalized lender Bankia has referred some 15 transactions related to suspected irregular credit lines given to companies managed by the family of the speaker of the Valencia regional assembly, Juan Cotino. The operations were made mostly through Bancaja, the largest bank in the Valencia region, which was merged into Bankia, the lender that was nationalized last year.

Among the transactions is a loan of 35 million euros to Share Capital, an association that two of Cotino's companies have an interest in, for the purchase of properties in Eastern Europe, Bankia's secretary of the board, Miguel Crespo, said in the High Court on Monday. Crespo, who was summoned as a witness, said that a Deloitte audit of Bankia did not raise any questions as to the entity's viability before it was nationalized.

The alleged irregular movements have come to light as part of the ongoing investigation into the failure of Bankia, which was propped up with a 30-billion-euro bailout from the European Union. In the coming days Manuel Lagares, the director general of Bankia's parent company, BFA, will give evidence as a witness while the entity's risk assessment chief, Ildefonso Sánchez Barcoj, and Bankia's internal auditor, Miguel Ángel Soria, have been officially named as suspects.

In total 36 people have been targeted in the probe, including 32 former Bankia board members. They stand accused of wrongful appropriation, false accounting and massaging the bank's figures to alter the price of things.