The High Court rules out annulling the procedure that took nearly two decades to reach trial
The Supreme Court has confirmed the minimum penalties that were imposed in the ‘Alvalle case’. The High Court rejects the appeals of some of the defendants and, with them, their claim that this procedure be terminated due to the fraud committed between 1994 and 1997 with aid from the European Union to transform orange into juice. The hearing was held almost two decades after the proceedings began, which even led to the death of some of the defendants. A circumstance that, the court emphasizes, “does not allow us to affirm that the evidence provided is insufficient to reach a conviction.”
As the sentence declares proven, the fraud was committed by declaring quantities of oranges far greater than the real ones as transformed into juice. The former president of the Alvalle food company and former Minister of Industry of the Autonomous Community, José María Casanova, was sentenced to three sentences of three months in prison each. The court agreed, however, that the sentences be commuted to fines. A ruling that the Supreme Court confirms in this new resolution.
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