The Supreme Court has confirmed a fine of 3,900 euros to a chief inspector of the National Police for making illegal queries in police databases. The judges declare it proven that there was a network of police officers in two Madrid police stations who, among other things, consulted the police records of foreign citizens seeking legal residence in our country. Another national police officer who did not appeal has been sentenced to pay another fine in this same case and the alleged leader of the group, a then-retired police officer, died before being able to stand trial.
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The facts recounted in the sentences to which elDiario.es has had access describe how between 2013 and 2014 a retired chief inspector of the National Police and another man dedicated themselves to "facilitating various foreign citizens procedures related to obtaining the necessary documentation to remain or reside in Spain". For this, the judges have firmly established that they needed to know whether or not they had a criminal record and they found out through two agents: one from the Villaverde-Usera police station and the chief inspector of the Carabanchel police station, both in the city of Madrid.
The group did not speak in code and the intercepted communications reveal how the police officers said that someone was "clean" if they had no pending accounts with the Justice or that they "had poop" if they had an arrest warrant, criminal record or entry on them in prison. The wiretaps and tapped communications reflect how some even offered to get passports for criminals in search and capture.
The alleged leader of the group died in 2016, several years before the trial was held, and the facts proven by the different courts that have studied the case do not include whether or not the agents charged money in exchange for making these inquiries in the police databases "Persons" and "Sidenpol". The wiretaps and the messages tapped by order of Court 1 of Plaza de Castilla do reflect how "300 for the background" was requested or how the deceased offered "one green for looking at a little thing" to one of the agents.
In total, throughout 2014, the two convicted officers made up to six queries in the police databases at the request of the retired chief inspector or the other person involved. One of them, according to the judges, was a criminal convicted of fraud and who had escaped from a French prison taking advantage of a prison permit. His goal was to get his passport back and find out if he could go to the police station without being arrested.
The Supreme Court, with magistrate Manuel Marchena as speaker, has just ruled the case firmly. The criminal chamber has rejected the appeal filed by the then chief inspector stationed at the Carabanchel police station and has confirmed his sentence of a 3,900-euro fine for the crime of revealing secrets. The other police officer, who was working at the Usera-Villaverde police station at the time, did not appeal the fine of 5,100 euros that the Provincial Court of Madrid imposed on him for the same offense two years ago. At first, the Prosecutor's Office came to request sentences of up to four years in prison for them.
A criminal on the run
The judgments of the Supreme Court and the High Court of Madrid reflect how the investigation began when Internal Affairs began to follow the trail of the chief inspector who died today, for his possible participation in crimes of forgery documentary and bribery. The judge agreed to tap into his communications and soon after, in August 2014, the agents overheard the son of a criminal escaped from a French prison contacting him to obtain information on the possibility of obtaining a passport.
This was the case that put them on the trail. According to both sentences, the information they sought in one of the six irregular accesses was from a man who had escaped from a French prison where he was serving a sentence for fraud. The agent verified that he had a search and arrest warrant and warned his interlocutor that he would be arrested as soon as he set foot in a police station.
This is the only intervention that Justice attributes to the then chief inspector of Carabanchel. The Supreme Court confirms his conviction for revealing secrets, ensuring that his conviction "is solidly built on the probative material" with "lawful evidence and an unequivocally incriminating sign." His access to the databases to check the file of the fugitive was not, says the Supreme Court, "an innocuous and irrelevant access to the database, but rather it provided a strategic advantage to a convicted person who was wanted internationally and who wanted to rule out the risk of his arrest."
In the first instance, the Court of Madrid was also blunt when affirming that the two convicted agents used "material means and computer applications of the General Directorate (...) entering various databases and providing" the retired former commissioner " information related to police and criminal records, search and arrest warrants, etc., that the latter demanded of them for private uses and unrelated to the public function". One of them claimed to have acted under coercion from the former high command and the judges dismissed the argument in a ruling that recalled the "friendly and colloquial" tone they used to discuss the issue over the phone.
The Carabanchel police station
The investigation that has ended in a firm conviction began in the summer of 2014, just a few weeks after the start of the accusation against four other officers from the same Carabanchel police station for allegedly falsification of evidence. The Prosecutor's Office even requested up to six years in prison for them for crimes of document falsification, but they were all acquitted by the Madrid Court for lack of evidence in January 2018.
The judges emphatically rejected that the Carabanchel police station had become a center for the production of false evidence and placement of fingerprints to reinforce accusations and inflate the figures for solving cases, as Internal Affairs suspected at first . The Justice then said that "we are not facing a prolonged activity in time that allows us to infer a prior agreement between various police officers of the Carabanchel Police Station to carry out acts of this nature."
Under the magnifying glass of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor's Office were three suspicious appearances of traces of alleged criminals: inside a private car, inside a patrol car and at a home. Already then the judges highlighted that an internal audit of actions in the last seven years of that police station did not leave any other appearance of fingerprints that "raise suspicion of having been manipulated." That sentence, explain sources of the case, was not appealed by the Prosecutor's Office and the acquittal was declared final shortly after.