White collar crime just ain't what it used to be

Conde was the epitome of Spain's 1980s get-rich- quick lifestyle, presided over, ironically enough, by Felipe González's nominally socialist government. King Juan Carlos II was photographed smiling beside him when he received an honorary doctorate. The final fall from grace of Spain's most charismatic and devious banker for misappropriation of funds, falsification of documents and fraudulent accountancy practices was also influenced by the Enro.

The Pope invited him to lecture in the Vatican on business ethics; King Juan Carlos II of Spain was photographed smiling beside him when he received an honorary doctorate; young Spaniards voted him their favourite role model; Spain's opposition party wanted him to lead it back to power. Fifteen years ago, Mario Conde, master banker, seemed to have the world at his feet. And, oh yes, he was also very, very rich.

Today he sits in Alcala Meco prison, just outside Madrid, starting his third spell behind bars in 10 years. This time, he's in for the long haul.

The Spanish Supreme Court has just doubled his sentence for a series of financial dirty dealings to 20 years. The ruling cites public revulsion at scandals like Enron as justification for a harder line against big business fraud. White collar crime, it seems, just ain't what it used to be.

Conde was the epitome of Spain's 1980s get-rich-quick lifestyle, presided over, ironically enough, by Felipe González's nominally socialist government.

The Spanish had a characteristically blunt and appropriate phrase for this flashily profitable business environment. They called it the pelotazo, the culture of the "kick in the balls". And nobody, it seemed, could kick so many quite so hard or quite so fast as Mario Conde, as competitors, colleagues and, ultimately, shareholders and taxpayers, found to their cost.

Born the son of a relatively humble customs official in Galicia in 1948, Conde excelled early. Studying to become a state solicitor, he scored the third-highest results ever in national exams. But he did not hang around long to investigate the crimes of others; he had some bright ideas of his own.

He came to the attention of the owner of a thriving antibiotics business, who invited him to reorganise the company's legal structures. Six years later, and now a partner, he sold the firm at a huge profit, and, with guile in one hand and capital in the other, fought his way to the presidency of one of Spain's most venerable banking institutions, Banesto (the Banco Español de Credito). His predecessor had been so thrifty that he did not have an official company car; Conde's flamboyant taste ran to private jets.

The banking sector has traditionally been even more powerful in Spain than in most economies, investing directly and widely in industry and agriculture as well as selling financial services. With the blessing of the popular González governments of the 1980s, this sector was consolidating fast. The Socialist Party's plutocratic cronies, known in Spanish celebrity magazines as "los beautiful people" because of their chic lifestyles, came to the fore in a series of mergers.

With his elegant suits, trademark gelled hair and aquiline features, Conde was also a darling of Hola! At a business and political level, however, he was out of sympathy with "los beautiful", and found himself dangerously isolated. He had been sharply critical of the Socialists' pursuit of economic integration within the EU. He took a more nationalist stance, which found an echo in the Spanish right-wing parties.

Conde's populist public image seemed to offer a possible alternative to González, and it was an open secret that he had been approached to lead the then moribund Alianza Popular before it was successfully rebranded as the Partido Popular by Spain's current prime minister, José María Aznar. He also had excellent contacts with a former prime minister, Adolfo Suarez.

From González's point of view, he was becoming disturbingly chummy with King Juan Carlos. In government circles, he was suspected of hatching anti-democratic plots to oust the Socialists.

González covertly supported an attempt by the Banco de Bilbao to take over Banesto in 1988. The exclusion of Banesto from the inner circle of Spanish banking was completed with a merger that created the Banco Central Hispanoamericano (BCH) in 1991.

Conde had never been averse to sharp practices, but now he became reckless. Banesto over-extended its loans and, when the central bank imposed an emergency audit in late 1993, the bank was found to have a deficit of almost €4 billion. Conde was forced out, and investigated for fraud.

Conde's spectacular downfall was presented as a brazen coup by an arrogant government in powerful sectors of the media, in some of which he had made huge personal investments.

At the time, this sounded at least half-convincing. González had been in power for 11 years. Journalistic and judicial investigations were revealing that this political hegemony had led to gross and widespread corruption.

"The system could not accept a centre of power like Banesto, which it could not control," Conde wrote. If he had been innocent, however, he would not have taken his next, most daring and most bizarre initiative.

González's final years in power were marked by unprecedented scandals, which would cost him the 1996 election. The grimmest of these concerned the use of death squads against the Basque terrorist group ETA in the mid-1980s. A body of evidence indicated that cabinet members, possibly including the prime minister, had approved a campaign of state terrorism involving torture, shootings and bombings.

González insisted that such allegations, which have subsequently been proven against his subordinates but not against himself, were part of a conspiracy to remove him from office.

Particularly, critical evidence was contained in certain military intelligence documents, which the government was refusing to authenticate. Conde cultivated a disaffected former military intelligence officer, Col Juan Alberto Perote, who had copies of these papers. The next step was blackmail, or something very close to it.

It says a lot about the quality of the evidence, and about Conde's continuing status, that González actually met his solicitor in 1995 to discuss a deal to bury the intelligence documents. The financier's demands were audacious, among them compensation of €90 million for his removal from Banesto.

In the event, no deal was done, and both sides subsequently claimed they were trying to protect state secrets. But significant moments in the prosecution of Conde were thereafter marked by the leaking of these documents to the media. The leaks damaged the government, but they did not protect Conde. In March 2000, he was sentenced to 10 years on separate charges related to Banesto.

On July 29th this year, the Supreme Court rejected his appeal, and doubled the sentence. The judges found him guilty of misappropriation of funds, falsification of documents and fraudulent accountancy practices. The increase was partly based on technical grounds, but also on their finding that, as director of the bank, he was aware of, responsible for, and personally benefited from the crimes of his subordinates. Conde's appeal to the Constitutional Court is thought unlikely to prosper.

The most significant point of all, however, is probably the judges' indirect but clear reference to the impact of Enron and other recent scandals on the criminal responsibility of executives for fraud, and their recommendations to legislators that external auditors also bear a heavy responsibility in such cases.

Globalisation is obviously being felt in the courtroom as well as the boardroom. For Mario Conde, this terminally painful pelotazo may have come all the way from Washington.