The Audit Court’s report criticizes the FROB’s unclear accounting methods, and estimates that €58 million was spent on professional fees paid to third parties for services such as consulting work and record-keeping.
What emerges from these findings is that the financial crisis may have been bad for the taxpayer, but highly profitable to advisors, consultants and notaries, among others.
The state paid €3.8 million for “other notary expenses, other advisory work and reports”
The full cost to the taxpayer of the banking bailout remains a mystery. The Spanish state still controls 65% of Bankia and BMN (headed by former savings bank Caja Murcia). Until these lenders are privatized, either together or separately, and the “bad bank” (known as Sareb) is liquidated, the state’s losses will not be clear. And Sareb still has 12 years ahead of it.
The one thing that has emerged is that the state will not be recovering all the money that it invested in the bailout. Government officials are resigned to the fact that €26.3 billion of public funds have been lost forever, even though the Popular Party (PP) government said in 2012 that citizens would not foot the bill for the banking crisis.
On the private side, banks put up a little over €8 billion for the Deposit Guarantee Fund (FGDEC), but had additional expenses – including guarantees for questionable credit lines – that bring the total cost of the bailout to the private sector to slightly over €18.9 billion.
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