SANTANDER: A Banking giant, out of the blue?

While I condemn violence and crime of any nature, there is a time when one must step back and ask the simple question: WHO are the real criminals? WHO is it that brings people to the point of violence? Could it be people who regard themselves and are regarded by others a “Pillars of Society”? Similarly, the question is raised in regard to Palestinians and the conditions which they live under and why they feel so helpless against a “machine” such as the Israeli regime and military, to wish to “punch back” in any way they can – sometimes suicidally.

One simply must look closer at these people who, while they believe they are better  – and some even state “We do God’s work” – cause sheer desperation to many due to their CORRUPT TO THE CORE activities. Can I be too condemning of this protestor then? No. I can’t. It is a 21st Century version of Jesus casting the money changers from the temple. I’m no religious person but I can say he was right 100%. But Jesus had power, this one man doesn’t. Educate the rest of the population on how it all works and, together, they would have power and need not use it violently.

I’ve been wondering how Santander is suddenly THE bank and how it suddenly came from a second division Spanish Bank background to a World force in such a short time. So I had a wee delve and came up with a few things to think about….

PLEASE ALSO BEAR IN MIND WHILE READING THE FOLLOWING THAT SANTANDER IS PART OF THE ROTHSCHILD INTER-ALPHA BANKING GROUP!

From the Guardian:  madoff-santander-shares

New Black Pope:

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“So? What’s your point now? One minute you’re up against the “jews” and the next it is the Roman Catholic church?? ”

Well the point is this:

The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2009) has led me to another remarkable element in the development of Jesuit casuistry. That is the early and important role of IBERIAN (Spanish) conversos (as Christians of JEWISH ancestry were called) in the development of the Society of Jesus, and its methodology. The evolution of sixteenth century Iberian societies contributed notably to the size and importance of the converso presence in the Jesuit order. At a time when Iberian conversos were increasingly excluded from a growing number of guilds, religious confraternities, colleges, religious and military orders, as well as residence in certain towns, the Jesuit leadership in the first three decades of the order’s history (1540-1572) opened their doors wide to candidates of Jewish descent.

Now, I’ll throw another little fish….

Santander. Where the hell did they appear from all of a sudden? Well consider this:

Emilio Botín (born 1 October 1934) is a Spanish banker. He is the Executive Chairman of Spain’s Grupo Santander. In 1993 his bank absorbed Banco Español de Crédito (Banesto), and in 1999 it merged with Banco Central Hispano creating Banco Santander Central Hispano (BSCH), which became Spain’s largest bank, of which he was co-president with Central Hispano’s José María Amusategui, until Amusategui retired in 2002. In 2004, BSCH acquired the British bank Abbey National, making BSCH the second largest bank in Europe by market capitalisation.

Keep reading…..

After attending as a boarding student the JESUIT SCHOOL of Colegio de la Inmaculada, in Gijón, he studied Law at the University of Valladolid in Valladolid and Economics at the University of Deusto in Bilbao.

A JESUIT school of all things!!

Botín was no newcomer to the banking world. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all bankers.

On 25 April 2008, two people died in a plane crash south of Madrid at a property belonging to Emilio Botin. Neither was a member of the banking family. The light aircraft, which was attempting to land at an airstrip on the Botin property known as El Castano, was transporting 441 pounds of hashish.

Nice huh? 🙂 But continue……

1999: Botin faced trial on criminal charges of “misappropriation of funds” and “irresponsible management.” However, in April, 2005 he was cleared of all charges.

2005: the anti-corruption division of the Spanish public prosecutor’s office cleared Botin of all charges in a separate case in which he was accused of insider trading.

January 2006: a Santander, Spain court dismissed a lawsuit stemming from the cancellation of agreements reached by the SCH board in 2004.

November, 2006: Botin was brought to trial along with four other company directors for allegedly falsifying official documents and helping clients evade taxes. Spanish press sources reported that although Botin was accused of crimes against the state, the public prosecutor resisted bringing the case to trial. Private prosecution was brought by a prominent shareholder rights group, the Association for the Defense of the Investor and Clients (ADIC), which claimed that the charges against him constituted the “biggest fraud ever committed in Spain.” Botin evaded serving a jail sentence after the case was dismissed, and an appellate court rejected an appeal brought by ADIC.

Most recently Botin’s name has been in the news because of allegations that in 1999, at the time of the BCH merger, he bribed Spain’s economy minister, Rodrigo Rato, in order to seek favor with government officials. Botin and Rato, alongside a group of former associates have been accused of engineering a deal in which Banesto, a Santander subsidiary currently controlled by Botin’s daughter Ana Patricia Botin, purchased a €6M stake in a bankrupt water utility owned by the Rato family. Rato, Botin, and Alfredo Saenz, who was then serving as Banesto’s CEO, are accused of misappropriating funds, breach of fiduciary duty, falsifying documents, and bribery. The case is ongoing.

Now, Rodrigo Rato:

He was appointed to become the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 4 May 2004, and took up his duties on 7 June 2004. He has left his post at the IMF on 31 October 2007, following the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings.

De Rato attended a JESUIT school before studying law in the Complutense University. So BOTIN and RATO BOTH Jesuits!!

Mr. Rodrigo Rato was the Spanish President’s Minister of Economy, who is responsible for the dismantling of the Spanish welfare state.

Mr. Rato is of the ultra-right . While in Aznar’s cabinet, he supported such policies as making religion a compulsory subject in secondary schools, requiring more hours of schooling in religion than in mathematics, undoing the progressivity in the internal revenue code, funding the Foundation dedicated to the promotion of francoism (i.e., Spanish fascism), never condemning the fascist dictatorship, and so on. In the economic arena, he dramatically reduced public social expenditures as a way of eliminating the public deficit of the Spanish government, and was the person responsible for developing the most austere social budget of all the governments of the European Community.

Gordon Brown, became Rato’s main advocate for the IMF position. Nowhere mentioned is the enormous costs this “success” has had on the quality of life of average folks in Spain. And these are the same policies that Mr. Rato is going to follow in the IMF, policies that have caused enormous pain and harm to the Spanish people, and will now be implemented world-wide. Nowhere, however, have the mainstream media reported on such important dimensions of Mr. Rato’s tenure as Minister of Economy of Spain. Quite remarkable!

Read more of what Rato did to Spain:
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Rato has since joined the Santander Advisory Board as requested by Botin.

But then we also have this:

The MADOFF PONZI SCHEME!

Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) — Banco Santander SA, Spain’s largest bank, said clients had positions valued at 2.33 billion euros ($3.1 billion) invested with Bernard Madoff.

$3.1 BILLION!!

The largest of ALL banks’ exposure to Madoff. BUT…..
Santander had only 17 million euros of its own funds invested through another fund. The $3.1BILLION was CLIENT exposure!

“Mr. Picard’s own investigation concluded that Optimal had no knowledge of fraud by Mr. Madoff, according to documents filed Tuesday in U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan.”

“Optimal’s (Santander’s Geneva based Hedge fund) relationship with Mr. Madoff dated back more than a decade, Tuesday’s court papers say. Some 70% of its affected clients are in Latin America, according to people familiar with the situation. Many of the clients also control firms with which Santander has a relationship.”

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“Much smaller enterprises feeding to Mr. Madoff include those run by two relatives of Santander Chairman Emilio Botín — his son Javier Botín-Sanz and son-in-law Guillermo Morenés.”

Spain’s anticorruption prosecutor will be looking closely at the relationship between Santander, the investment fund Fairfield Greenwich Group, and the Madoff funds, the prosecutor’s office said.
Investigators said they want to know why Mr. Botín sent one of his chief lieutenants to see Mr. Madoff in New York just weeks before the scheme collapsed. Rodrigo Echenique, who has been close to Mr. Botín for many years, visited Mr. Madoff in his New York office at the end of November. Investigators say they want to know whether Santander was aware of any problems at Mr. Madoff’s firm then. Santander declined to comment on the trip or make Mr. Botín available for comment.

Mr. Echenique also declined to comment on the trip.
Investigators say they also are focusing on the role of Fairfield partner Andres Piedrahita, a Colombian who lives in Madrid. He funneled client money into the Madoff funds, and according to marketing materials he also managed at least one other fund on Santander’s behalf that had losses from Mr. Madoff’s alleged fraud.
Mr. Piedrahita and Fairfield declined to comment.”

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And where did the $billions actually go? No-one knows to this day it seems….

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Using the connections of secretive Opus Dei, begun under Franco’s regime, Emilio Botin of Banco Santander co-ordinates with the President of the Vatican bank (Angelo Caloia), an alleged member of Opus Dei, which is not accountable to the Holy See of the College of Cardinals, though it is on Vatican City soil. In Puerto Rico, Botin’s Banco Santander Overseas Bank launders money for the foreign corporation Internal Revenue Service, headed by Opus Dei member Manuel Diaz Saldana, who is also Comptroller of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (ELA). Secretive Governor-Elect Luis Fortuno, and Ex-Governor Rafael Hernandez Colon, are also members of Opus Dei. Richard Carrion, head of Popular Holdings, is also on the board of David Rockefeller’s JP Morgan Chase controlled Verizon, and also launders IRS collections and illegal drug profits through offshore accounts. Botin’s Banco Santander has swallowed the assets of many UK banks for pennies on the dollar, leaving the billions in liabilities to UK taxpayers.

Now, the Vatican Bank is said to be a successful and profitable bank. By the 1990s, the Bank had invested somewhere over US$10 billion in foreign companies. In 1968 Vatican authorities hired Michele Sindona as a financial advisor, despite Sindona’s questionable past. It was Sindona who was chiefly responsible for the massive influx of money when he began laundering the Gambino crime family’s heroin monies (taking a 50% cut) through a shell corporation “Mabusi”. This laundering was accomplished with the help of another banker, Roberto Calvi, who managed the Banco Ambrosiano. Both Calvi and Sindona were members of the P2 Lodge. (Henry Kissinger is alleged to be P2)
When Pope John Paul I became Pope in 1978 he was informed about the allegations of wrongdoing at the Vatican Bank, and instructed Jean-Marie Villot, Cardinal Secretary of State and head of the papal Curia, to investigate the matter thoroughly. Pope John Paul I died after only 33 days in office, leading to claims that he had been murdered as a result of discovering a scandal. Pope John Paul I is generally accepted to have died from natural causes, although some medical experts believe that he may have died from a pulmonary embolism or an adverse reaction to the medication that he was taking rather than from a heart attack as was stated in original press reports of his death.

More on the Vatican Bank…

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But would you believe…..?

The Vatican Bank is under investigation for alleged involvement in a money-laundering scheme using accounts at one of Italy’s largest banks, according to a weekly investigative magazine.

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Strangely, the money laundering is in the same timescale as Madoff’s Ponzi scheme run by Santander.

And lastly, just for good measure:

Bilderberg Group –
Ana Patricia Botin, Executive Chairman, Banesto; Vice Chairman, Urbis; Member of the Management Committee, Santander Group, Madrid

Emilio’s daughter.

Now, forgive me if I’m just stretching here but something smells here. Sure Madoff was a criminal – they all are. BUT, as we know, the criminals never get touched. They get off. MADOFF seems to be a scapegoat in my view.
Look at how many times Botin just walks away from any charges. Then look at how he’s had Rato (Spanish Government and IMF) in his pocket. They’re BOTH Jesuits. There is a strong connection to Angelo Caloia previously of the Vatican Bank (run by the Jesuits). The Spanish Jews have become Jesuits. Botin’s entire family were involved in this Madoff stuff and the Group as a whole had the largest exposure to it of ANY Bank/Fund while only 17M Euros of their own but $3.1Billion of clients’ money.

Yes Santander “made good” on some of the losses by their clients but not a lot at the end of the day. And what did they do? They offered Santander shares rather than the cash.

The bank booked a charge of 350 million euros against 2008 earnings for costs associated with the compensation program. The offer includes stock paying an annual yield of 2 percent and an agreement by clients to forgo any legal action and to keep Santander as their “preferred” bank as long as the shares stay in circulation.
So let’s just imagine for a moment that it actually was Santander and Botin/his family, who cashed in on the loss of their own clients to the tune of $3Billion or so. That cash rich injection could just allow for the buying up of a number of other banks now couldn’t it?

June 1st 2010 UPDATE:

VATICAN BANK UNDER INVESTIGATION
Santander Involvement –

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