CNMV: Pescanova had an illegal accounting system

The President of the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), the Spanish regulator investigating allegations of financial malfeasance against Spanish seafood giant Pescanova, said the company has been operating using an illegal and undeclared accounting system.

According to the Spanish media, the senior leader of the Spanish regulator, Elvira Rodríguez, said at a recent informational meeting that Pescanova had two types of accounting; a legal one and an illegal one. "The illegal one was bigger and full of junk," said Rodríguez.

Furthermore, the president defended the CNMV's supervision of Pescanova's accounting. Regarding this, she said that the accounting was formally correct and the audit report was legal. So, in the legal accounting the CNMV never detected anything strange and only recently discovered the other accounting.

The reaction of Pescanova's former president, Manuel Fernández de Sousa, came straight away. According to the media, attorneys for the company's former CEO said that "the statements are untruthful, serious and unacceptable." In addition, they countered that there is no evidence of another accounting system in Pescanova. They added that Elvira Rodríguez's statements breach the principle of the presumption of innocence and neutrality.