Former airport border boss sentenced to prison for receiving preferential treatment bribes

The National Court has sentenced the former chief commissioner at the Madrid-Barajas airport, responsible for the border controls, to 5 years and 8 months in prison for having received gifts in kind and in cash between 2010 and 2015, including high-end cars, luxury watches, or money, by business owners as a reward for giving “the best treatment and consideration” to the clients and relatives of said executives.

To the other defendant in this case, a businessman and lawyer, the magistrates of the Fourth Section of the Criminal Chamber sentenced him to three months in prison for a crime of active bribery committed by a private individual. with the analogue mitigation of collaboration, in a highly qualified degree.

The Court sentences the primary defendant to five years and 1 month in prison for the continued crime of passive bribery and another 7 months in prison for improper passive bribery. In addition, it orders that hr restore to the State the amount of 457,298.52 euro and the confiscation of watches from brands such as a Rolex model Oyser Perpetual Date GMT-Master II, made of yellow gold with bracelet and green index dial, and Hublot model Geneve.

The Court acquits both defendants of the continued aggravated crime against the rights of foreign citizens, in its form of favouring illegal immigration, and the continued crime of administrative prevarication.

For the Court, it has not been proven that the former commissioner has violated the regulations governing immigration control with abuse of his position as chief commissioner of the Madrid Barajas border post, which the accusation attributed to him for promoting the illicit trafficking of people from Guinea and that they worked in the company linked to the lawyer.

The ruling explains that, from the examination of the evidence conducted in relation to these crimes, attributed to both defendants, although with different titles of accusation, no “accreditation whatsoever” is inferred about the commission, by one or both, of the aforementioned crimes.”

It adds that the illicit trafficking of people has not been proven, with violation of the regulations for the entry of Foreigners. And it is not confirmed that an arbitrary administrative resolution has been issued in violation of the duty to act in accordance with the legal system.

The ruling considers it proven that the former commissioner accepted gifts, cash payments and trips that in the case of the businessman, were as rewards so that the commissioner would provide better treatment to the executive’s Equatoguinean clients who had positions of responsibility in Guinea.

For the Court, these are not isolated acts, but are constituted by 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.

In the case of the deceased businessman Fernando L., the Court considers it proven that he gave the first defendant a Porsche Cayenne as a mere attention and in consideration of his police positions. In the case of the lawyer, the delivery of a Porsche Panamera, two luxury watches, a family trip to London and various financial amounts is considered proven.

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 continued passive bribery committed by the former commissioner has been proven in the proceedings because he did not know how 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 subscriptions. One of these payments, according to the ruling, appears in the conversation held so that he came to giving the former’s son a gift on the occasion of his wedding (25,000 euro in total), “not being able to deny the payments that they covered the expenses of the vehicles he used, none of which were in his name. Such expenses, due to their amount and consistency, exceed those incurred by a simple friend, especially when the person making them denies that they were mere liberalities, since they tended to seek favourable treatment at the Madrid-Barajas airport for their friends, clients related to the national oil company of Equatorial Guinea (GEPetrol)”, he concludes.

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