The Criminal Court number 15 of Seville has sentenced two years in prison for a crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets to the ex-worker of UGT Andalusia accused of leaking to the media, but not to the Police or judicial authorities, "information reserved and sensitive "of the plot of the" simulated invoices ", by which the Investigating Court number nine has initiated an oral trial against the former secretary general of UGT-A Francisco Fernández Sevilla and four other former officials of the union organization.

In this sentence, issued on March 31 advanced by Diario de Sevilla and collected by Europa Press, the Criminal Court number 15 details that the accused, Roberto Macías worked at UGT Andalucía from December 2008 until his dismissal in the same month 2012, as the administrative of the organization's purchasing central, in charge of orders, purchases, invoicing and expense management.

The sentence declares as proven facts that on November 7, 2012, shortly before his dismissal, during his working hours and using the computer at his job, the worker turned over a total of 22,500 into a digital USB storage device " files or computer files, extracted from the UGT-A data server ". Subsequently, and always according to the sentence, he downloaded all that information on his home computer.

Such files contained "reserved and sensitive information", especially "invoices issued by various UGT-A providers", such as the mercantile companies Imprenta Pineda, Chavsa, Lienzo Gráfico, Publicar DM, Siosa, Viajes Macarena or Travel Advisors, with "relative documentation the so-called 'abseiling' and 'boats', figures that made reference to certain percentages passed on to suppliers and not declared before the Administration by the union ", as well as the" commission of simulated invoices ".

Opening of oral trial

In this regard, the ruling recalls that such aspects were being investigated by the Investigating Court number nine in Seville, which recently ordered the opening of an oral trial against the former UGT-A general secretary Francisco Fernández Sevilla and four other former officials of the union organization, for an alleged continued crime of subsidy fraud in competition with a continued crime of falsification in a commercial document.

According to the court, through the practice of the alleged false invoices, the union organization would have defrauded public subsidies amounting to more than 40.75 million euros.

As for the extraction of the aforementioned files from the UGT-A data server, the Criminal Court number 15 determines that "there is no doubt that said action was carried out by the accused, since it is recorded that at that time he was in his working hours and access came with his username. "

The defendant, according to the sentence, "has acknowledged that he was fully aware that those invoices, emails and other documents to which he had had access while performing his duties at the union purchasing center were absolutely compromising for people to which they made reference, even to the point of deriving criminal responsibility, given the investigation that was being carried out into the alleged illegal financing of the union, "to which is added their testimony that their intention was" to publicly denounce these crimes. , which is why he offered this information to the media, but not to the police, courts or prosecutors , since only they deserved confidence, in his own words, and to 'avoid possible retaliation' from what he considers' a criminal organization'".

"The accused at no time has used the reporting channels that are foreseen" by the institutions, the court asserts, stating that Roberto Alejandro MC "provided this information, or at least part of it, to certain media in order to bring it to light. "

Given the case, the Criminal Court charges him with a crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets, which he says is configured "as a limit to freedom of expression and freedom of information and it seems that it could conflict with the European directive 2019/1937 relating to the protection of persons who report infringements of Union Law, which seeks the protection of whistleblowers. "

However, and after invoking this directive by the accused, the Criminal Court number 15 specifies that said directive "is not yet properly part of our internal law, as its transposition into national law is pending", in addition to the fact that such directive "provides a channel specific complaint within own organization or to the competent authorities ", ie that" seeks to protect whistleblowers who made public revelations, but by requiring that the person has reported first by internal or external channels. "

Thus, the Court condemns this former UGT-A worker to two years in prison for a crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets, pointing out that the information leaked by him to the media "directly affected the personal sphere of individuals who they were being investigated "by Investigating Court number nine, with the mitigation of undue delays, since the Prosecutor's Office claimed three years in prison for him and UGT-A, as a private prosecution, requested four years and that he compensate the union with 60,000 euros for the "moral damage" caused to it.

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