In an action rarely seen, the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (FGJ-CDMX) criminally proceeded against Banco Santander to be charged as a legal entity for an alleged fraud of 8 million pesos to the detriment of an account holder.
The CDMX Superior Court of Justice scheduled an initial hearing for July 25 for the bank and two of its external lawyers to be charged with the crime of procedural fraud, before Judge Fernando Miguel Sarabia Villuendas, according to court reports.
The Prosecutor’s Office in Civil Courts of the FGJ-CDMX intends to formulate the accusation against Santander and external lawyers Luis Rischia Velázquez and Domingo Adrián García Hernández, in judicial folder 016/1160/2023.
The matter dates back to October 2020, when a client was unable to make any withdrawals from her bank accounts.
When inquiring about the situation, the bank informed her that both her financial assets and two houses she owned had been seized in two civil lawsuits that were being held in the Seventh and Twentieth Courts of that matter in common law.
The victim discovered that the seizure of her assets was the result of lawsuits from Santander in which they demanded the collection of a loan of 8 million pesos ($450,500 USD) from Fashion Fabric SA de CV.
According to the investigation, although years ago the woman was a representative of the textile company, at that time she was no longer one, and she never asked for the loan. In fact, the FGJ-CDMX itself confirmed in a report that her signature had been forged to acquire the loan.
“I categorically affirm that I never signed that credit agreement, and that the signatures on it are absolutely false,” she says in the complaint.
“This document shows that they maliciously falsified my signatures in the credit agreement, and placed me as legal representative of Fashion Fabric SA de CV, and as a joint obligee, but, I reiterate, I never signed that contract nor did I hold myself as legal representative of said company.”
The Prosecutor’s Office summoned Fernando Borja Mujica, former Legal Director and today Secretary and Deputy General Legal Director of Banco Santander México, to testify as a witness, but he did not appear at the procedure scheduled for last December 5.
Before Santander, the only bank that had been criminally charged as a legal entity was HSBC, which in January 2019 was linked to proceedings for the crime of procedural fraud.
On that occasion, the capital’s Prosecutor’s Office attributed to HSBC the alleged forgery of a signature to evade the payment of more than one million dollars derived from a real estate dispute.