Angel Ron: the ex-banker of Popular who (for now) has evaded prison

Ángel Ron joined the historic Banco Popular in 1984 and left through the back door in 2017, as president of a failed entity bought by Santander for one euro. Under his supervision, what for decades had the reputation of being the soundest bank in Spain ended up being the last in a long list of financial institutions overcome by the years of the financial crisis.

The Galician banker alone took over the leadership of Popular in 2006, with the resignations of brothers Luis and Javier Valls Taberner, but he garnered the most headlines with the collapse of Popular. As if the bankruptcy were not enough, Ron made a leap into the public imagination when in 2017, having secured a pension of 24 million euros, he took Santander to arbitration – which he lost – for his dismissal, while claiming compensation as Popular's shares plummeted on the stock market.

In 2020, the National Securities Market Commission fined Ron and other senior executives of Popular with more than one million euros for "omitting data" and "presenting misleading information" in Popular's annual reports between 2013 and 2015. Despite this, the now former banker works normally with his son Carlos and his partner Jorge Gil Lozano at the financial firm Viable Capital Partners. He is awaiting, however, the most important trial for the "Popular case, announced for the first half of 2027, when he will sit – with ten other former directors – before the National Court accused of alleged fraud and accounting falsification. If he ends up losing it, the penalty could exceed six years in prison.