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Top Spain banker sentenced for graft found dead
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This file photo taken on October 16, 2014 shows Caja Madrid's former head Miguel Blesa leaving a hearing in Madrid on October 16, 2014 accused of spending sprees with a company credit card while he was chief executive of bailed-out Spanish bank Caja Madrid. Blesa was found dead with a gunshot wound to the chest at a property in Spain's south near Cordoba on July 19, 2017 Spanish media reported. (AFP/Dani Pozo)
T
he former head of Spanish bank Caja Madrid, who was convicted of graft along with ex-IMF chief Rodrigo Rato, was found dead Wednesday with a gunshot wound to the chest, police said.
The body of Miguel Blesa, 69, was discovered inside a car at a private estate in Villanueva del Rey in the southern province of Cordoba, a Guardia Civil police spokeswoman said.
Spanish media said his death appeared to be a suicide but police refused to confirm it, saying only that the authorities were investigating.
Spanish daily El Pais said Blesa was having breakfast with friends at the hunting estate and left the table to move his car. He was found dead shortly after, it added.
His body will undergo an autopsy at a forensics institute in Cordoba on Thursday to determine the cause of death, the regional government of Andalusia said in a statement.
Blesa, one of the figureheads of Spain's financial crisis who had links to senior members of the governing Popular Party, was chairman of Caja Madrid until it merged with six other troubled savings banks to create Bankia.
A court in February sentenced him to six years in jail for misusing the bank's corporate credit cards.
Rato, the one-time head of the International Monetary Fund who chaired Bankia between 2010 and 2012 when it was nationalised, was sentenced to four-and-a-half-years in prison over the same scandal.
The two men had appealed against their sentences and had been released on bail while the case was resolved.
In total, 65 former staff were found guilty of using corporate credit cards for irregular expenses such as buying jewels, paying for holidays or expensive clothes.
A total of 12 million euros is said to have been spent on the so-called "black cards".
The case sparked widespread anger when the scandal first broke in 2014, at a time when Spain was recovering from years of recession and a banking crisis partly triggered by Bankia's massive bailout.
Blesa was accused of setting up the scheme and was found guilty of having misappropriated 435,00 euros.
In 2013 he because the first prominent banker to go behind bars since the start of Spain's financial crisis.
He was jailed as part of a probe into Caja Madrid's purchase in 2008 at an inflated price of the City National Bank of Florida, but was released 15 days alter after that case was dropped.
Blesa was in the middle of another lawsuit involving irregular bonuses during his time at Caja Madrid. He always denied any wrongdoing.
"This has affected my image, my honor and my family," he said last year during his trial for the "black cards" affair.
