Anti-corruption has appealed the 19-year prison sentence imposed on the commissioner Jose Manuel Villarejo, which he considers insufficient. The Prosecutor’s Office, which in the trial demanded 83 years in prison, asks the Appeal Chamber of the National Court to also condemn him for the crimes of bribery and revelation of secrets of which he was acquitted.
The retired commissioner was tried for three of the many pieces into which the tandem case: The projects Iron, Land y Painter. The sentence of the Fourth Section of the Hearing He was found guilty of several crimes of revealing secrets, but not of all those attributed to him by prosecutors. He also convicted him of falsifying documents.
Now the Prosecutor’s Office is asking that the bribery of which he was accused in two of the pieces be imposed on him, estimating that he had taken advantage of his status as an active official to do business. For each of the crimes the request is six years in prison.
Against this thesis, the court ruled that, although he was indeed a police officer when he hired the investigative work, the business was not related to that condition. One of the judges cast a dissenting vote that supported a conviction for bribery.
In this line, the prosecutor estimates that the sentence voted by the other two magistrates of the court includes “a manifest error in the evaluation of the evidence on the authentic activity carried out by the defendant José Manuel Villarejo Pérez and his connection with the police functions that he had entrusted”.