- Courts: The keys to the Afinsa case
The Supreme Court confirms the 'Philatelic Forum case' scam that affected 268,000 people who can now be compensated. The Criminal Chamber has notified on Thursday a sentence in which it ratifies that the facts proven by the National Court the magistrates consider it demonstrated that said investors did not know that the seals acquired were not worth even a small part of the money they delivered, that they were not revalued , and that only by attracting new customers did the company continue to return the invested capital plus the high interest guaranteed, higher than those offered by the banks. The facts reviewed constitute a crime of fraud, aggravated by reason of its amount, since the clients were caught by deception.
The High Court condemns 16 defendants with penalties ranging from 6 months in prison and 11 years and 10 months in jail , the latter imposed on former president of the Francisco Briones Philatelic Forum for continued offense of aggravated fraud in insolvency and punishable insolvency proceedings. continued falsification of annual accounts, as well as money laundering, for which he is also condemned to pay a fine of 49.7 million euros.
The sentence, of which the magistrate Miguel Colmenero has been the rapporteur, establishes that the compensation to the victims of the scam to which the defendants Briones and Juan Ramón González Fernández (former legal advisor of the company) must respond, and subsidiary Filatélico Forum , it will be determined in execution of judgment in attention to the total of the amounts actually delivered by the clients to the Philatelic Forum, reduced in the amounts received by the injured parties due to the liquidation of the company, and without counting the agreed interests that had not been subscribers
However, despite endorsing the main arguments of the National Court ruling, the Supreme Judges correct some technical aspects of that ruling. The Chamber reduces the sentence to Briones from 12 years and 4 months to 11 years and 10 months because, in relation to the crime of money laundering, when the attenuation of undue delays occurred, the penalty had to be imposed in its lower half, whose maximum was 3 years and 3 months, which is what is established instead of the 3 years and 9 months imposed by the sentencing court. This main modification affects the former legal advisor of Fórum Juan Ramón González, whose sentence goes from 6 years and 3 months to 3 years and 3 months in prison, plus a fine of 15.9 million, because the court understands that, in relation to the crime of fraud, his performance fits as an accomplice and not as a necessary cooperator.
On the other hand, the sentence acquits four of the twenty convicted by the National Court, considering that there is not enough evidence against them and that their presumption of innocence should prevail. And regarding the figurehead Pedro Ramón Rodríguez , the penalty is reduced by 6 months (from 3 years and 6 months to 3 years) as an accomplice of the scam, because the accusations requested for him 3 years in prison and that limit cannot be exceeded in virtue of the accusatory principle.
Pyramid scam
The Supreme Court explains in the judgment that the Philatelic Forum offered to the public the sale of lots of stamps, assuring them that, after the term established in the contract, they would be in charge of selling them in the market at a higher price and that, if they did not find a buyer , the same Forum would acquire them. The latter was what happened in virtually all cases . In addition, it assured them a profitability during that period, superior to that offered by the banking entities.
Meanwhile, customers ignored that in reality the money that society received from them was partly allocated to the purchase of new philately at prices much lower than those that were then sold or awarded to customers, partly to pay customers who wished to recover their investment or to those who received the insured interest, partly to the operation of the company and partly diverted to the personal assets of the accused.
The ruling indicates that some defendants created and others participated in circuits created with interposed societies through which, by circulating the merchandise in a real or assumed way, they managed, with successive sales, artificially increase the price of the stamps that Forum finally acquired. They also proceeded to clandestinely extract from Forum seals already acquired by it, which circulated through them circuit of those societies so that they finally returned to Forum, thus thus paying again for the same seals. In both cases, in addition to being used to artificially increase the price of stamps, these circuits were used to divert money in favor of some of the defendants.
The Supreme Court confirms that the proven facts constitute a crime of fraud. He explains that the sale of stamps or, of other objects, with a repurchase agreement, can be done lawfully, "but in the case, the will of the investors was captured by deception, and that deception was what determined the acts of disposal that those were doing to their own detriment, by placing their money in an ignored situation of high risk of loss. "
Constant losses
Regarding the crime of insolvency punishable, it is also proven that "the business produced constant losses, due to the commitment to repurchase with interest since the only source of income was the money of investors. The large costs of production, organization and distribution, due to the maintenance of the commercial network and the massive purchase of stamps, plus the treasury that required the return of the money to the investors and the payment of the agreed interests, progressively increased the insolvency situation. defendants diverted money to their personal assets . All this meant that the asset could not cope with debts. "
As regards the crime of laundering, some defendants are convicted as they have intervened in operations aimed at concealing the origin of the money that the authors of the scam diverted in their favor, as well as the identity of the owner of those amounts, in many cases using societies that were only indirectly controlled by the perpetrators of the crime of fraud.
Regarding the crime of falsification of the social accounts , for which former President Briones and the two external auditors have been convicted, the Chamber recalls that article 290 of the Criminal Code sanctions de facto or legal administrators of a company constituted or in formation, that falsify the annual accounts or other documents that must reflect the legal or economic situation of the entity, in an ideal way to cause economic damage to it, to any of its partners, or to a third party.
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