The Appeals Chamber of the National Court has agreed to annul the first sentence in the Tándem case, which sentenced former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo to 19 years in prison, and has ordered the court that tried him to issue a new one in which it assesses the all of the evidence presented in the oral trial and pronounces on all the crimes that are the subject of the accusation.

The Chamber has upheld part of the appeal of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which demanded a higher sentence than the one imposed. In the now annulled sentence, from July of last year, the Fourth Section sentenced Villarejo to 19 years in prison for crimes of revealing company and private secrets, while acquitting him of bribery and extortion in the degree of conspiracy.

In addition to the commissioner, 26 other people were tried, including his partner Rafael Redondo, who was sentenced to thirteen years in prison. Nine other people were sentenced to sentences of between three months and two years – among them the husband of television presenter Ana Rosa Quintana -, while 16 others were acquitted, including Villarejo’s wife, son and several police officers.

After examining all the appeals presented, the Appeals Chamber considers that the trial chamber did not rule on issues raised by the parties, and therefore orders it to evaluate all of them.

Specifically, he must carry out an evaluation of the evidence carried out in the trial and for which there is no motivation and rule on the crimes of conspiracy to extort in any of the pieces, obstruction of Justice, lack of motivation of the compensation set for civil liability, the daily fine and the contradictions in several facts considered proven.

The Appeals Chamber upholds the appeal of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office for the acquittal of the crime of bribery and on which it cannot rule as it has agreed to annul the sentence so that in the new ruling all of the evidence presented in the trial is assessed. oral.

The Fourth Section justified the acquittal for the crime of bribery in that the acts carried out by Villarejo were not the exercise of his position nor were they related to his public activities since those who hired him, although they knew his status as a police officer, did so for his business network and its contacts with the State security forces and the administration of justice, which allowed it to achieve great doses of effectiveness.

This sentence had the dissenting vote of a judge who understood that he should be convicted of the crime of bribery.

Now, the Appeals Chamber, without ruling on this crime, limits itself to examining the doctrine of the Supreme Court on the crime of bribery, whose protected legal asset is correct impartiality in the exercise of public office, guaranteeing the probity and impartiality of its officials. .

According to jurisprudence, this crime does not require damage to the public cause understood as “verified and accredited damage” apart from the distortion that entails the principle of impartiality or objectivity in the performance of public activity.

The crime would be consummated with the request or offer of a gift without the need for the external material result to occur or for the behavior contrary to the law that is sought to be effectively carried out, since from that moment the administration, as well as impartiality, is harmed. of its officials.

On the other hand, the Appeals Chamber confirms the ruling in relation to all the previous issues raised by the accused in which they denounced alleged procedural irregularities committed both in the way of transmitting the information to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office at the beginning of the case, as the proceedings carried out by the Public Ministry, as well as the judicialization of the case itself and the entries and records carried out and the chain of custody of the enormous amount of seized material.

The court rejects the violation of fundamental rights alleged by the accused and denies the existence of an alleged plot that former commissioner Villarejo denounced to persecute him at all costs.

Thus, the Chamber rejects the nullity of all the actions due to alleged spurious and suspicious purposes that gave rise to their initiation and that the commissioner denounced and the complaint considered anonymous is admitted as a way of transmitting the information to the prosecutor.

The court concludes that there has not been a general and prospective investigation and also validates the judicial instruction.

In parallel to this sentence, the National Court has handed down a new sentence, this time of three years and one day in prison for a crime of passive bribery against Villarejo and the former police officer Antonio Giménez Raso for having investigated irregularly, at the beginning of 2014 and at the request of Planeta, to one of the arbitrators of the award between this communication group and Kiss FM.

In its ruling, the court of first instance acquits the head of Planeta Security and the director of Legal Services, Antonio López and Luis Elías, respectively, of the crime of active bribery considering that both were unaware of Villarejo’s active police status. when they hired him to prepare the so-called “July Report”. It also acquits Villarejo and Viñeta of the crime of document falsification that the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office attributed to them at the beginning of the oral trial.

The ruling of this piece 12 of the so-called “Tándem case” has the dissenting vote of the president of the court, Ángela Murillo, who is in favor of acquitting the accused since the crime that would have been committed, in her opinion, would be fraud. instead of bribery.

The proven facts of the sentence explain that Villarejo and Giménez Raso, through their company Cenyt, met with the two accused of the Planeta Group with the task of investigating whether, who had been one of the arbitrators appointed by the Chamber of Commerce of Madrid, Julio González Soria, in the arbitration procedure that faced the companies Uniprex SA in 2003 and 2004, in which the Planeta group and the Radio Blanca group participated, could have received bribes on account of such intervention, which could be revealed by the increase subsequent patrimonial damage that was detected after his arbitration participation for which he had been appointed in such dispute.

Said arbitration procedure, he explains, had its origin in the conflicts that arose between the parties due to the acquisition of the advertising management of the Kiss FM stations and which concluded with an arbitration award contrary to the interests of the Planeta group.