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An autopsy found Blesa, who ran the ill-fated Madrid-based
savings bank Caja Madrid from 1996 to 2010, took his own life on
a country estate in the southern province of Cordoba, the
Andalucian authorities said in a statement on Thursday.
Blesa was sentenced to six years in jail in February over the
misuse of company credit cards, although the jail term had been
postponed pending the outcome of an appeal by Blesa.
The former banker came to symbolize the disconnect between the
well-off financial elite and Spain's millions of unemployed
during the 2008-2013 economic crisis after a property bubble
imploded following years of unfettered bank lending.
Blesa was an avid big-game hunter and photographs of him posing
with a rifle and a slaughtered hippopotamus, a bear and a lion,
among others, caused a wave of indignation in a country where
one in four workers were out of a job.
Caja Madrid was folded in with six other savings banks in 2010
to form Bankia <BKIA.MC> after the crisis sent bad loans
soaring, crippling lenders heavily involved in property loans.
Bankia was subsequently bailed out in 2012 at a cost of more
than 22 billion euros ($25 billion).
(Reporting by Paul Day; editing by Alexander Smith)
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