The battle of Sandra, daughter of Amancio Ortega and second fortune in Spain, against five banks

Amancio Ortega Gaona, majority shareholder of Inditex, is the richest man in Spain. Immediately behind on the list, although at a considerable distance, we find his daughter Sandra Ortegawhose assets in 2022 reached 5.4 billion euros, above Rafael del Pino Calvo-Sotelo, president of Ferrovial, or Juan Roig, majority shareholder of Mercadona.

Well, as surprising as it may seem, the stepsister of Martha Ortega (they share a father but not a mother) faces at least four of the five financial entities that once lent money to the hotel company Room Mate, the chain created by Kike Sarasola, endorsed by Ortega. Deutsche Bank, Banca March, Société Générale, Bankinter and Abanca have filed a civil suit against Rosp Corunna, the family office of Amancio Ortega’s daughter. They demand that he assume the losses of a loan of 140 million that accumulated in the worst period of Covid-19, when confinement and the closure of all establishments were imposed due to measures to avoid contagion in the pandemic.

The point is that Kike Sarasola’s hotel chain entered bankruptcy. The businessman lost control of the firm he had founded into the hands of the Angelo Gordon fund and creditors suffered high losses. The five banks, which had lent a total of 140 million euros, demanded to execute the guarantee of Rosp Corunna (Sandra Ortega) but the daughter of the founder of Inditex (who controlled almost a third of Room Mate) refused and placed the blame to the former CEO of her company, José Leyte, whom she accused of having forged her signature, claiming that she was unaware of the agreements. But the criminal procedure that was initiated against him ended up being archived.

Now that Justice has left the way clear for them, the banks are preparing to recover their loans in various civil proceedings, since although the defendant is the same, each entity presents its claim separately. They first requested the indictment of Sandra Ortega before Leyte was exonerated from the accusation of falsifying a commercial document, but once the procedure was underway, the judges rejected the first-born daughter of the textile giant’s largest shareholder from being investigated.

Rosp Corunna’s trust in Kike Sarasola and Room Mate began during the life of Amancio Ortega’s first wife, Rosalía Mera, Sandra’s mother and co-founder of Inditex. Her daughter Sandra not only inherited this investment but supported it, since with her ample solvency she could afford it. Sandra Ortega owns 7% of the textile empire, the largest company in Spain by capitalization.

Ortega’s trust in Leyte was broken three years ago, when the manager was fired. This opened other judicial processes. One by the daughter of the creator of Inditex, who accused her former number two of the appropriation of three million euros from Rosp Corunna, between 2015 and 2019, through the collection of bonuses and salaries; and another by the former CEO of family officewho claimed compensation higher than what he received for the termination of his employment relationship, which he considered inappropriate.

In the first lawsuit, Ortega’s lawsuit failed. The Investigative Court number 8 of A Coruña filed it, although this ruling is not yet final. In the other procedure, the one referring to dismissal, the Social Court number 1 of the same city rejected Leyte’s petition, although it ended up winning in the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia, which in November 2022 handed down a sentence to your favor.