Evacuation at Banco Santander HQ after white powder delivered in envelopes

BANCO Santander evacuated staff from the main building at its headquarters in Madrid after receiving envelopes with white powder inside addressed to senior executives on Tuesday, October 6.

Twelve employees who had touched the envelopes were kept under medical observation as a precautionary measure.

The Guardia Civil arrived at the scene and deployed a specialist unit for dealing with chemical threats and sent the envelopes on to be analysed.

The first findings from a preliminary investigation indicated that it had been a false alarm, according to an official Guardia Civil post on Twitter later in the day.

The bank did not identify the executives who were the intended recipients of the envelopes. In a statement, they confirmed that the envelopes were addressed to members of the management team and added that the incident resulted in minimum interruption to trading:

“With the exception of the affected offices, the rest of the central services of the bank continued to operate normally.”

Banco Santander is, in terms of its market value, the biggest bank in Europe with its financial centre located in Madrid. The evacuated building is located in the centre of the bank’s campus, which also houses offices, conference rooms, sports grounds and restaurants.