The National Court has dismissed the requests of José Ramón Prado Bugallo, the drug trafficker known as Sito Miñanco, and Carles Puigdemont’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boyé, not to be tried for money laundering in the so-called “Operation Myth”, the alleged introduction in Spain of almost four tons of cocaine and the network created to hide the benefits in different ways.
In an order, the Chamber dismisses the allegations presented by Sito and Boyé in which they requested that the exception of res judicata be considered, that is, that they not sit on the bench since they had previously been tried for acts similar to those of the “Operation Myth”. The lawyer, in addition, requested the inhibition of the cause to the Provincial Court of Madrid and that a question be raised before the CJUE.
Sito, prosecuted in this case for drug trafficking and money laundering, requested that the exception of res judicata be considered for the second of the crimes, since he had already been tried and convicted of the same acts in a sentence of the Provincial Court of Pontevedra January 2019.
The Chamber points out that, as the Prosecutor’s provisional conclusions document shows, it turns out that the crime of money laundering for which Prado Bugallo is accused in “Operation Myth” is not for the same facts as for those who were sentenced by the Court of Pontevedra.
It explains that they do not refer to the same time period, which in the case of the Galician court reaches up to 2012, but that they would have occurred between 2016 and 2018. In addition, it points out that the criminal activity from which the goods introduced into the regular economy would come they would come from his actions in that period and while he was serving a sentence of 16 years and 10 months in prison for crimes against public health and since 2016 in a third-degree center.
For his part, the lawyer Boyé considered that the facts of which he was accused had already been tried in a contentious-administrative procedure opened as a result of the confiscation of money that several investigated persons had in their suitcases at the Barajas airport. The prosecutor accuses Boyé of contributing to said administrative procedure contracts prepared ad hoc in order to prove the origin of the seized money.
For the Court, there is no identity of facts, nor of subjects in the case of Boyé, between the administrative, contentious-administrative proceedings and this one, referring to the money laundering of “Operation Myth”, for which reason the exception of res judicata.
The Chamber also rejects submitting a preliminary ruling to the CJEU as these are issues that can be resolved through the channels provided for in Spanish law. It also rejects the declination of jurisdiction in favor of the Madrid Court since the relatedness of the crimes investigated and in order not to break the continence of the case, it is necessary that they be prosecuted in the same procedure.
