The appeals room of the National Court has agreed to annul the first sentence of the Tândem case, which sentenced ex-commissioner José Manuel Villarejo to 19 years in prison, and has ordered the court that tried him that he dictate another one in which he evaluates all the evidence practiced in the oral trial and pronounces on all the crimes object of accusation, such as the one of bribery for which he was acquitted with a private vote of a female judge.
Although the appellate court endorses the investigation and makes it clear that it is not a “general” case against Villarejo, it considers part of the appeal of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, which demanded a higher penalty than the one imposed, and considers that the fourth section of the criminal case, which was the one that put the ex-commissioner and 26 other defendants in the dock, did not take into account all the evidence that was presented at the trial.
In the sentence now annulled, the court sentenced Villarejo to 19 years in prison for the crimes of revealing company and private secrets, but acquitted him of the crimes of bribery and extortion in the degree of conspiracy. In addition to the commissioner, they tried 26 other people, such as his partner Rafael Redondo, who was sentenced to 3 years in prison.
The court will now have to carry out an evaluation of evidence practiced at trial and on which there is no motivation and will have to pronounce with respect to the crimes of conspiracy for extortion in any of the pieces, obstruction to justice, the lack of motivation for the compensations set in terms of civil liability, the daily fine fee and the contradictions in several facts considered proven.
The court that tried Villarejo acquitted him of bribery after finding that the projects he carried out were not in the exercise of his position nor were they related to the activity of commissioner; the clients were in the case of his profession – according to the judgment – ??but they hired him for his business network and contacts. Although the appeals court does not rule on whether Villarejo – who was in pre-trial detention for more than three years – committed bribery, it does explain, after consulting the jurisprudence, that this crime would be consummated with the request or the offer of a gift without the need for the result to be produced or the task to be executed, since from then on the Administration is harmed.
Just yesterday the National Court sentenced Villarejo to three years and one day in prison for passive bribery for having investigated irregularly at the beginning of 2014, on behalf of Planeta and being an active police officer, one of the arbitrators of the award between this group of communication and Kiss FM.
In the sentence, the third handed down for the so-called Tandem case and the first to convict Villarejo for bribery, the fourth section of the criminal case acquits Planeta’s security manager and the director of legal services, Antonio López López and Luis, respectively , and sentences policeman Antonio Giménez Raso to the same penalty as Villarejo.
