The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed in substance the sentence handed down by the Second Criminal Chamber of the National Court for the payment of part of the renovation work on the party’s headquarters on rue Génova with funds from fund B which amounted to one million euros.
In this process, one of the pieces derived from the so-called “Bárcenas papers” was judged. Luis Bárcenas, the former treasurer of the PP, was sentenced to two years in prison for the continuous crime of accounting falsification in connection with a tax crime and falsification of documents. Two directors of the company Unifica SL, responsible for the reform at the headquarters on rue Génova, were sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for tax offenses.
These sentences were already very far from what the anti-corruption prosecution requested, which asked for 5 years in prison, and even further from the sentence demanded by the popular accusations brought by the activists of the PSOE, Izquierda Unida and the Observatory Desc .
And now they have been reduced by the Supreme Court due to the excessive delays observed in the procedure, initiated in 2008.
The prison sentences of 2 years and 9 months imposed on Unifica administrators, Gonzalo Urquijo and Belén García, were reduced to nine months, while Bárcenas’ sentence is reduced to 8 months in prison.
The reduction in sentences is not due to the acquittal of the crime of lying to which the Supreme Court agrees – given that these are ideological lies committed by individuals, which are decriminalized except in exceptional cases, which does not does not necessarily have an impact on the sanction – as an assessment of a mitigating circumstance of excessive delays, based on the length of the procedure. Eight years passed between the opening of the procedure and the decision of the National Court. Only five years passed between the conclusion of the investigation and the oral trial.
“Parsimony” of the National Court
“That the actions of the court [la Audiencia Nacional] Due to its volume of work it does not deserve any reproach, it does not dilute the reality of the delays and the damage they cause. This is what must be compensated by mitigating circumstances,” says the Supreme Court ruling, written by Judge Antonio del Moral.
“That for justified reasons, such as the lack of means and resources, human and material, a procedure be disseminated sparingly is not an obstacle to the assessment of the mitigating circumstance,” he adds.
Also the total amount of the fraudulent fee is reduced understanding, like the prosecutor of the instance, that the sums which had actually been taxed the following year, although at a lower tax rate, could not be included in the amount defrauded. The fraud would only concern this lower percentage, but not the total amount which, essentially, was declared and paid. The defrauded fee thus goes from 870,000 to 374,000 euros.
The Court’s judgment acquitted other accusations (money laundering, other tax fraud, illicit association, etc.) and rejected various civil proceedings supported, one after the other, by various popular accusations. The Supreme Court considers these decisions to be correct.
The PP must reimburse 123,669 euros to the Public Treasury for having benefited from the fraudulent quota during the only fiscal year considered to constitute an offense, that of 2007. The party’s declaration of subsidiary civil liability was not appealed.
Costs of popular action
The judgment also confirms the decision of the National Court of condemn popular charges of paying fees of an acquitted defendant as well as those supported by the Popular Party, linked to the assertions made by these accusations without being legitimized to do so, in contradiction with the known guidelines of jurisprudence.
The acquittal of Luis Bárcenas for the offense of embezzlement for which he was accused, after having already been sentenced to three years in prison for facts inseparable from those currently being tried, is also confirmed. The criteria of the National Court are ratified: it was res judicata and, in addition, civil responsibilities were extinguished by the resignation of the injured party (Popular Party).
