The National Court has decided to reduce the sentence of Carlos Salamanca, former chief commissioner of Madrid-Barajas airport, to 3 years and 3 months in prison in the Villarejo case. Salamanca was accused of receiving gifts between 2010 and 2015 from businessmen in exchange for preferential treatment for their clients and family members upon arrival at the airport.
The reduction of more than two years of the sentence is due to the fact that the judges of the Fourth Section of the Criminal Chamber corrected “the contradictions and lack of clarity” that the Appeals Chamber attributed to the initial sentence. For this reason, said chamber decided, on July 10, to annul the conviction – he had been sentenced to 5 years and 8 months in prison – and to repeat the sentence. Now, the judges have modified the qualification of the offences of passive corruption, which entails a reduction in the length of the sentence, according to the judgment to which Europa Press had access.
On the other hand, the court decided to maintain the three-month prison sentence imposed on lawyer Francisco Menéndez, found guilty of a continuing crime of active corruption committed by an individual, with the similar mitigating circumstance of highly qualified collaboration.
The two defendants were acquitted of the prosecution of aggravated crimes against the rights of foreign citizens in their mode of facilitating illegal immigration, as well as of the prosecution of the crime of administrative prevarication.
According to the proven facts, Salamanca received various “luxurious” gifts from Menéndez between 2016 and 2017, including “high-end cars”, “luxury watches”, money and trips worth almost half a million euros. These gifts were intended to obtain preferential treatment for the lawyer, his Equatorial Guinean clients and their families upon their arrival at Madrid airport. However, the decision states that there is no evidence that this preferential treatment “materialized in specific acts that benefited these passengers”.
