The Supreme Court has issued a ruling validating the use of anonymous complaints to initiate investigations into possible crimes committed within companies. The court highlights "the importance" of these types of complaints, especially in cases such as the one analyzed in which the company did not have an internal regulatory compliance program. The magistrates remember that the internal complaints channel, also called whistleblowing , has been included in a recent European Parliament directive that protects people who report violations of European Union law.

In the case studied, the Zaragoza Court considered three workers from an ArcelorMittal plant -today under another name- dedicated to the acquisition of scrap material and its transformation into steel, they agreed with suppliers to receive scrap loads mixed with Sterile (non-recyclable waste materials in iron or steel) at a much higher rate than usual in the scrap metal sector. When the cargo arrived at the company they applied a discount for the presence of sterile much lower than the real one, so that their own company paid for convertible scrap what were sterile useless for the transformation. This resulted in an appraised fraud of 456,000 euros by one supplier and 340,000 by another.

In 2012, the company heard what was happening through a letter received in the Human Resources department, which was brought to the attention of the Police: "Good. First of all I want you to understand why I remain anonymous so as not to retaliate towards my person after what I'm going to expose. I want to let you know about a possible fraud that is occurring in the scrap park between sorters and scrap metal, especially Javier Beltrán, benefiting several scrap metal in the scrap classifications, changing categories of qualities or putting much less waste than it takes. This is done at several hours but in general when this man goes on a morning shift and the trip or trips are received from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. in exchange for these classifications this man benefits economically with significant amounts of money. Here I record, and now that in his hands. Sincerely. "

The anonymous concluded with a sentence of the Zaragoza Court sentencing five years in prison to five defendants for a crime of fraud, and nine months to an accomplice. The ruling of the Supreme Court, of which Judge Vicente Magro has been a speaker, rejects the resources of the convicted and highlights and validates the use of "anonymous complaints" for the detection of illegalities

"On this need to implement these channels of complaint - and that was seen in this case with high efficiency by constituting the start of the investigation as notitia criminis - the Directive is justified in the finding that the informants, or complainants are the channel more important to discover fraud crimes committed within organizations, "says the ruling. "And the main reason why people who have knowledge of criminal practices in their company, or public entity, do not proceed to report is fundamentally because they do not feel sufficiently protected against possible reprisals from the entity whose infractions they report," he adds.

"Ultimately, it seeks to strengthen the protection of the whistleblower and thereby increase its performance in the discovery of illegal or criminal practices. [...] It should be noted, therefore, that the implementation of this complaints channel is an integral part of the needs to which we have previously referred to the regulatory compliance program, since with the complaints channel who intends, or plans, to carry out irregularities will know that from its most direct environment an anonymous complaint may occur that will determine the opening of an investigation that immediately close it ".

Among the allegations of those sentenced to the Supreme Court was that it was not credible that a mere scrap separator could deceive a macro-enterprise such as ArcelorMittal and that the problem was that the company did not use the multiple ways it had to prevent what happened. "There was no deception but lack of control by ArcelorMittal," said one of the resources. The Supreme responds with an aphorism that he has already used in other sentences: "A robbery remains a robbery even if the victim has behaved unconcernedly with his things."

"True and true is, however," the sentence continues, "that we have pointed out on other occasions the problem that may exist in the business sector the absence of control measures or mechanisms [...] We have reported that it is basic in the company the existence of due internal control in these, through the Anglo-Saxon technique of compliance as a set of internal standards, established in the company at the initiative of the administrative body, with the purpose of implementing in it a model of effective organization and management and ideal to mitigate the risk of committing crimes. "

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