Spain, where protesters are celebrating a major victory after that country’s high court opened a criminal investigation into the former head of Spain’s biggest mortgage lender. Rodrigo Rato, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, has been ordered to appear in court to face criminal fraud accusations related to the downfall of Bankia, a banking giant that has sought tens of billions of dollars in bailout money. The news marks a rare case where a former executive is facing a criminal probe related to the global financial crisis.
In addition to Rato, 32 other former banking officials and executives have been accused of fraud, price fixing, and falsifying accounts in a lawsuit brought by one of the country’s smaller political parties. Spain’s attorney general also announced a probe into Bankia last month.
The people who helped to make this happen, this moment—well, while people in the United States were celebrating Independence Day, the word came down that the head of Bankia, which may be responsible for the largest banking fraud scandal in Spain’s history—and as you pointed out, he’s the former head of the IMF before Strauss-Kahn. This is a very significant figure. He’s a close ally of the current prime minister of Spain, the party, the PP, or PP party. This is a scandal that’s rocking the country.
But who made this happen, to begin with? And this is who we’re going to hear from today, are members of the equivalent of the U.S. Occupy movement who got so frustrated with the 1 percent not being held accountable, in light of the numbers of evictions in this country and the financial crisis that they, like we in the United States, based here in Spain, they decided to fund a lawsuit that ultimately led the attorney general to open this investigation, which is close to an indictment of Rodrigo Rato—extremely significant. In fact, just this morning, I was speaking with the former attorney general of Spain, and I said to him, “How significant is this?” And he said, “Ah, this is just the beginning.”
So, let’s turn first to a young man I interviewed yesterday, as the news was coming down. His name is Olmo Gálvez. He is with the M15 movement. That’s for May 15th. May 15, 2011, was the day protesters came into the streets here in Spain. He was profiled when Time magazine named protester as Person of the Year. He was the person they profiled in Spain. This is Olmo Gálvez talking about the significance of Rodrigo Rato being called into court, facing criminal charges that could land him in jail for years. And a message to people in the United States, a real message from the protesters here, the Occupy movement here, is this is the kind of action that Occupy movements can be involved in around the world that can shake the 1 percent