Tecnotramit, on the ropes after an alleged scandal in mortgage management
Workers entrust their future to banks while awaiting bankruptcy proceedings
BarcelonaWhen contracting a mortgage, interested parties pay banks certain provisions that are used to pay taxes, fees, and registrations. It is normal for the bank to temporarily hold the corresponding amount and for, later, an agency to handle all the required bureaucracy. However, in this context, a situation has come to light that would have left an as-yet-unspecified number of users unprotected. This is the case of the Tecnotramit agency.
According to financial sources, entities such as CaixaBank, Banc Sabadell, or Bankinter hired the Barcelona-based company to handle complex operations, such as an associated purchase and sale. And, later, they withdrew their trust when they learned that it allegedly kept the difference between the funds that clients reserved to meet their obligations – mainly, tax payments to the Treasury – and the final amounts. The departure of major clients has led the company to a critical situation and, in fact, as the company communicated to union representatives, Tecnotramit is expected to declare bankruptcy in the coming days. El ARA has tried to contact the company, but has not received a response.
In order that this shortfall did not end up affecting the pockets of end-users, the banks have had to assume the costs of the alleged malpractice. Thus, bank clients have not had to bear extra expenses to face the situation. Although they have managed to avoid the impact of the alleged crime of misappropriation of funds, those who do seem to be left in a bad position are the hundreds of workers that Tecnotramit currently employs. The withdrawal of clients – the banks – has left the future of the 700 people on the company's payroll in limbo (at the beginning of the year, the staff was almost 860 employees).
The role of banks
Union sources indicate that the banks have left them “abandoned” after years in which they would have de facto acted as their “master”. In fact, they assure that in recent years the Tecnotramit workers even had corporate emails from some of the entities, and that they were obliged to identify themselves as bank employees when speaking with end users. Furthermore, according to the same sources, the banks were responsible for setting the schedules of the management company's employees, just as they approved the holidays requested. Some entities also had their own office space in Tecnotramit's offices.
For these reasons, currently, according to voices close to ARA, the works council would be considering asking that the different entities have to take charge of the workers. Thus, it could be that they ask to be absorbed by these entities because they understand that they were acting as a fraudulent subrogation, that is, that they were really working for the banks. In addition, union sources assure that it is “impossible” that the entities were not aware of the “malpractice” that the company was carrying out, since, by working for banking entities, Tecnotramit periodically went through different audits, and this “has been going on for a long time”. “The banks have a lot to keep quiet about”, they assure.
“The clients should not notice it”
The professor at UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM) David Igual estimates that the mobilized resources “cannot be very high figures, because the expenses of these types of procedures range between 1,000 and 3,000 euros per operation, approximately”. “We are not talking about extraordinary magnitudes”, he assures ARA. The different sources in the sector consulted speak in the same direction. None of the entities, however, has wanted to specify how many clients the alleged scandal has affected, nor how many resources have been allocated to alleviate the issue. However, once the company files for bankruptcy, it is expected that the extent of the impact can be specified.
Igual emphasizes that Tecnotramit is part of the supplier companies that “simplify the task of the entities”. “If all goes well, the clients of the entities should not notice it, because the client of Tecnotramit is the bank”, he states unequivocally.
