Spain's High Court orders BBVA to stand trial in spying case

MADRID, July 9 (Reuters) - Spain's High Court on Thursday ordered the country's second-largest bank BBVA and its former chairman, Francisco Gonzalez, to stand trial for alleged bribery and disclosure of company secrets following a corporate espionage probe.

The case is part of a wider inquiry into several companies' hiring of a private investigation agency run by former police commissioner Jose Manuel Villarejo to carry out various allegedly illegal assignments between 2004 and 2016.

BBVA declined to comment. None of the bank's current board are involved in the probe.

Spain's anti-corruption prosecutor has called for the bank to be fined €181.8 million ($208 million) for its role in the spying case and requested a jail sentence of up to 173 years for Gonzalez. However, according to the Spanish criminal code, the maximum time he could serve is limited to 15 years, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office said.

The case has roiled Spain's corporate sector since 2019 and caused some reputational damage, but with no clear impact on businesses.

It is the first time that former leading corporate executives have had to stand trial in the case. Gonzalez was BBVA chairman at the time the bank hired the agency. He resigned as honorary chairman in March 2019 to prevent any harm to the bank's reputation. He has denied wrongdoing.

BBVA previously confirmed it hired the agency but said it had found no evidence of spying. In its 2025 annual report, BBVA said that the actions under investigation do not imply criminal liability for the bank.

Leading executives of Iberdrola, Repsol and CaixaBank were also investigated at some point by the High Court but their cases were dropped.

Last year, Villarejo was acquitted for the work he carried out for Repsol and CaixaBank aimed at garnering information on the former president of Sacyr Vallehermoso, Luis del Rivero, between 2011 and 2012. Former second-tier executives from CaixaBank and Repsol were also acquitted.

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(Reporting by Emma Pinedo and Jesús Aguado; editing by Tomasz Janowski)