The National Court has sentenced the former chief commissioner at the Madrid-Barajas airport Carlos Salamanca to 5 years and 8 months in prison for having received gifts in kind and cash between 2010 and 2015, including high-end cars, luxury watches or money, by businessmen as a reward for giving “the best treatment and consideration” to the clients and relatives of said executives.
Salamanca had had other legal proceedings but had always managed to emerge victorious. However, the complaint by Francisco Menéndez, self-styled ‘the paymaster’, has been key to his conviction. He acknowledged that he gave him multiple gifts over the years and gave him money in exchange for later making arrangements for him at the airport. In addition, Salamanca introduced Menéndez into his circle of friends, among whom was former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo and with whom he did work.
The Court orders Salamanca to return to the State the amount of 457,298 euros and the confiscation of the watches of the brands Rolex model Oyser Perpetual Date GMT-Master II, in yellow gold with bracelet and green index dial, and Hublot model Geneve.
The ruling considers it proven that Salamanca – a close collaborator of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo – accepted gifts, cash payments and trips that in the case of businessman Francisco Menéndez were as a reward for the commissioner to provide better treatment to the Equatorial Guinean clients of the executive who They had positions of responsibility in Guinea.
For the Court, these are not isolated acts but constitute a criminal plot in which a plurality of gifts are delivered to a public official over a long period of time in significant amounts to obtain the satisfaction of personal interests and assets of certain subjects.
The Court indicates that due to the amount of the gifts and their high amount “it cannot be conceived that the deliveries and corresponding receipts of money and other effects are mere gifts made between people united by a relationship of friendship, as the Court intends to show. last of the defendants named in his long statement.”
For the judges, the continuous passive bribery committed by Salamanca has been proven in the proceedings because he was unable to give reasonable explanations about the ownership and permanence in his home of the enormous amount of luxury objects and gourmet supplies that were seized, nor about the trip to London. with which he and his wife were entertained, having admitted certain payments.
One of those payments, according to the sentence, appears in the conversation held with Menéndez so that he was splendid when it came to giving the former’s son a gift on the occasion of his wedding (25,000 euros in total), “not being able to deny the payments that were made of the expenses of the vehicles he used, none of which were in his name.
Such expenses, due to their amount and consistency, “exceed” those that a “simple friend” makes, especially when the person making them denies that they were mere liberalities, since they tended to seek favorable treatment at the Madrid airport. -Barajas for its clients related to the national oil company of Equatorial Guinea (GEPetrol)”, he concludes.
