The Second Section of the Provincial Court acquitted a businessman who promoted the Rabanales Campus and who was facing six years in prison, accused of a crime of fraud and falsification of documents engaged through the request for credits for construction materials or supplier services to carry out the renovation of the Da Vinci building on the university campus with a joint venture worth 1.2 million euros.
The court decision includes as proven facts that in order to carry out a project, a Temporary Union of Enterprises (UTE) was created through several companies whose purpose was the execution of works adaptation of this building on the Rabanales campus and urbanization of its surroundings in the capital of Cordoba.
The judgment states that “all the amounts of the credits in question were entered in the accounts of one of the two UTE companies and that they were allocated to pay the obligations of this entity“.
At the due date, the above-mentioned sums were not returned by UTE to the Bank. The court considers that the payments were intended, “to the knowledge of the corporate representative, to provide financing to the parent company since it presented serious cash flow tensions derived from the problems of this project and other works and constructions for the University of Cordoba because there were delays in the payment of certificates and those amended.”
This company in Solfa, on a regular basis, alone or through its partners, companies linked to the construction of Cordoba“provided various services to the UTE and other very diverse temporary unions that had been formed for the works of the Rabanales Campus.”
The court states in its ruling issued by the TSJA that “the status of the liquidation of the relations between the two partners of UTE da Vinci is unknown, although part of the the credits have been justified and there are some subsequent capital contributions, as well as other prior financing transactions, including the payment of a promissory note to achieve solvency in favor of the first of them.
BBVA Confirming, the EFC claimed from the second of the entities that made up this union of companies the amount paid, of which 475,209.93 euros were recovered.
The remaining amount, 799,368.49 euros, was claimed in ordinary declaratory procedure 351/2009 which is pending before the Court of First Instance number 9 of Córdoba and which is suspended due to prejudicial criminal proceedings, pending this procedure.
Finally, the first company to which the credits were paid, the judgment continues, “entered into voluntary bankruptcy proceedings, which were declared fortuitouslacking assets to satisfy the sums he received.
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Among the reasons given by the court for acquitting the accused was that “no matter how much the private accusation brought by the second of the UTE companies influenced the idea that the specific operations that are the subject of the accusation can be separated from the general operation of the temporary union of companies,” it is that it cannot be because that is what operating mode “which governs the relations between the two companies and the actions of the manager.”
In the same way, the court specifies that “it is absolutely contradictory, moreover, that the operations included in the tax returns are accepted, and that it is maintained that all the operations are false or that it is claimed in its debt integrity when works exceeding 230,000 euros are recognised or other financing operations have been accepted; This is nothing other than a consequence of the confusion in the scope of these relationships between entities that never develop autonomously but within the framework of the common action of the UTE.
Finally, the court of the second section specifies in its resolution “that the procedure has a clear economic nuance“.
