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The National Court has imputed to 14 televisions, among them the main chains, in the investigation of a supposed fraud by which millionaire income was obtained by the copyright of musical contents emitted in nocturnal programs. At the request of the Prosecutor of the National Court, the magistrate attributes to the chains a crime of corruption in business committed through organization and / or criminal group.

The list of defendants reaches Televisión Española, Atresmedia (Antena3), Mediaset (Tele5) and the autonomous televisions of Andalusia (Canal Sur), Extremadura, Asturias, Galicia, Aragón, Baleares, Basque Country (EITB), Madrid, Canary Islands, Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León.

The investigation was opened in 2016 following the allegations of different associations and individual partners of the SGAE, which made known the existence of a group of partners of this company that for 10 years had been performing irregular actions regarding the registration and modifications of musical works

The magistrate's car details the operation of the operation known in the sector as La Rueda. The fraudulent registration of alleged modifications of original works is treated as if they were new works, without any or only minimal variation of the authentic and original, in most cases. The registrations were made either in the name of the denounced or people of their surroundings or of societies created for this purpose as assignees of the copyright.

The operation began by contacting young students of classical works in conservatories who were offered to appear on television interpreting any of those works. Subsequently, the defendants recorded the work broadcast on television as their arrangement "either by changing the title, either making slight arrangements and charging the accrued copyright when in fact the work is the original classic without any variation."

The magistrate figures the total fraud at 100 million euros taking into account that the period under investigation refers to the years 2006-2011 . The approximate amounts that the group of investigated would be entering would be around 20 million euros per year.

The instructor points out that those investigated could be acting in collusion with workers of television producers , so that "they would pay these commissions so that their repertoire would be disseminated at night, with preference to other works." In the same way and to avoid being detected and always appear the same beneficiaries ceded their copyrights to relatives, spouses, children or creating societies or producers.

The judge, following the prosecutor's criteria, considers that criminal activity "could not be carried out without concerted action with the different television networks in which the musical repertoires that generate the aforementioned economic benefits are emitted, which would thus be acting in collusion with the so far investigated, because their intervention would be aimed at recovering part of the money they pay annually to the SGAE for the use of the repertoire of the investigated. "

The origin of the performance called "return" , continues the magistrate, is found in the creation by the televisions of musical publishers with which they intended to reduce the money they pay annually to the SGAE. At the end of the year, if the chains register songs that they emit they must charge a series of copyrights that substantially reduce the total amount paid to the authors' society. They usually keep 50% of those rights. The other 50% is the one that gives input to composers, interpreters, producers and assignees that share percentages of that remaining part.

The complaint must go beyond the persons involved and reach the chains "because they did not activate or apply any protocol aimed at preventing the commission of criminal acts, nor did they effectively implement control or reaction mechanisms suitable for detecting criminal actions committed within of their corporations, thus allowing the issuance of musical repertoires not with quality criteria, obtaining audiences or other lawful purposes for such television entities, but with an objective of a fraud . "

The resolution indicates that the proceedings carried out so far reveal the absence of prevention mechanisms "aimed at establishing a culture of respect for current legislation. Also, these indications show a radical violation of legality and behaviors that seriously attacked free and straight competition in hiring. "

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • SGAE
  • National audience
  • Intellectual property

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