The National Court has sentenced Commissioner Carlos Salamanca, who was responsible for borders at Madrid's Barajas airport and friend of Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, to five years and eight months in prison. The court has considered it proven that, between 2010 and 2015, he received significant amounts of money (at least more than 125,000 euros in cash) and gifts (high-end cars, luxury watches, trips…) to attend the hearing. fat and facilitate the uncontrolled entry into Spain of senior officials of the Guinean state oil company Gepetrol, linked to the dictatorial regime of Teodoro Obiang.
The trial against Salamanca was held last January. Prosecutor Miguel Serrano described him as a “corrupt” agent of the National Police who, guided by his great “ambition” and love of luxury, accepted handouts and left aside the “criteria of impartiality and his police zeal” to enrich himself and lead a high standard of living. During the oral hearing, a second defendant (businessman and lawyer Francisco Menéndez) played a fundamental role. Menéndez, who went to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office in 2017 to denounce the plot of the Villarejo case, He told the court that he showered the Barajas commissioner with gifts so that he would give “privileged treatment” to his Gepetrol clients, who would later also hire Villarejo.
The judges of the National Court, who consider it proven that Salamanca received more gifts from other businessmen “as mere attention and in consideration of his position”, attribute two crimes of passive bribery to the commissioner. And, in addition to the prison sentence, they order him to return more than 450,000 euros to the State. Menéndez, who made an agreement with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and admitted his participation in the plot, is sentenced to three months in prison for active bribery after applying “the analogous mitigating circumstance of highly qualified collaboration.”
In its ruling, dated this Wednesday, the court concludes that the gifts to Salamanca did not constitute “isolated acts”, but rather responded to a “preconceived plan” and the existence of an authentic “criminal plot”, “where a plurality and diversity of gifts to a public official over a long period of time, in significant economic amounts, to obtain the satisfaction of the personal and property interests of certain subjects.” In turn, the Court discards the defense thesis presented by Commissioner Barajas during the trial, when he alleged that these gifts were sent to him out of simple friendship. “It cannot be conceived that the deliveries and corresponding receipts of money, as well as other effects, are mere gifts made between people united by a relationship of friendship,” the magistrates reproach him, destroying his excuses.
This trial, focused exclusively on the relationship between Carlos Salamanca and Francisco Menéndez, was the second oral hearing of the Villarejo case that is celebrated. These two characters are fundamental to understanding the judicial investigations against retired commissioner Villarejo, already sentenced in another part of the case to 19 years in prison. The macro summary has as its origin an anonymous complaint that arrived in 2017 and that the public ministry attributed to the businessman, who later dared to collaborate with the investigators: Menéndez confessed his own involvement; he explained how Salamanca introduced him to Villarejo; and he recounted how, then, he acted as an intermediary for senior Gepetrol managers to do dirty business with Villarejo.
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