Why use "con que" instead of just "que"?

Question

In the below sentence, why use "con que" instead of just "que"?

Un funcionario del banco central se encontró con que el dispositivo conectado a los sistemas de mensajería financiera Swift no funcionaba.

A central bank official found that the device connected to Swift financial messaging systems did not work.

(translated by google translate)

the sentence is from this article

Answer 1

According to the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, the verb encontrar, used with the meaning of "finding someone or something unexpectedly or by chance", can be used in two ways:

• As the usual transitive verb:

  Alguien llamó a la puerta. Abrió y encontró a Ángela.

• Or most frequently, as an intransitive, pronominal verb followed by the con preposition:

  Alguien llamó a la puerta. Abrió y se encontró con Ángela.

So as you may now see, the verb in your example is used in this second way:

Un funcionario se encontró con que el dispositivo no funcionaba.

If used in the first way, the sentence would be like this (and also valid):

Un funcionario encontró que el dispositivo no funcionaba.