Well ventilated theories of nefarious - and highly profitable - understandings between Commonwealth Bank and HBOS at the time of the 2008 takeover of Bankwest received a scornful appraisal by CBA's top lawyer at the most recent parliamentary hearing on the "impairment of customer loans."David Cohen, who doubles up as CBA's group general counsel and head of group corporate affairs, is one of a small cohort of C-suite executives of major banks obliged to repeatedly appear before inquisitors to confront claims of malfeasance, to put it mildly, in connection with their post GFC approach to a select cohort of now enraged business customers.Cohen fronted the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services earlier this month, opening up with a comprehensive survey of key data on the Bankwest takeover. He produced a spirited assault on the hypotheses developed to support a thesis of bastardry by Commonwealth Bank toward many of its Bankwest business borrowers.As Cohen's prepared opening remarks clarify and rebut an abundance of controversial material, they are reproduced here with minimal edits.David Cohen set the scene for the committee: "There are broadly three questions to consider in relation to Commonwealth Bank and Bankwest."First, is there any evidence of a conspiracy around the purchase of Bankwest and did Commonwealth Bank have an incentive to impair loans to reduce the purchase price or gain some other benefit? The unequivocal answer to that is: No. "Commonwealth Bank could not reduce the purchase price payable to HBOS by impairing customer loans, nor did it attempt to do so. Commonwealth Bank repaid all of the wholesale funding, and there was no claw-back possible. "There were no warranty claims in relation to impaired loans. There was no loan guarantee from the British government, as has been claimed, and there was no capital benefit from impairing loans, as has been claimed. "Commonwealth Bank incurred more than A$2 billion of losses on Bankwest commercial loans and had no recourse to other parties for those losses. "They were borne by Commonwealth Bank shareholders. A conspiracy theory is simply not true."Secondly, putting aside the conspiracy theory and the lack of any motivation to do so, did Bankwest take action against customers who were meeting the obligations on their loans? Clearly, the answer again is: No."We have examined 36 of the submissions provided to the committee. Of those 36, the customer was in monetary default in 33 cases. Of the remaining three, in one case there was no monetary default at all and, therefore, no enforcement action was taken. "In the second case, the customer appointed a voluntary administrator itself, not Commonwealth Bank or Bankwest. In the third case, the customer invited Bankwest to appoint a receiver because of its financial difficulties."Thirdly, accepting that there was no conspiracy and the customers were failing to meet obligations to Bankwest, did Bankwest act too quickly or did it fail to adequately work with customers? Again, the answer is: No. "We have examined 28 submissions related to Bankwest where a receiver was appointed.