The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has decided to extend for one month its final decision on the appeals filed by those convicted of using Caja Madrid “black” cards, including its former president Rodrigo Rato, given the “complexity” of the issues raised.
The order known today clarifies that although the deliberation and vote took place on May 22, the magistrates have been forced to extend the term given the “complexity” of the appealed aspects and the “impossibility of passing sentence” in the ten following days established by the Criminal Procedure Law (LECrim).
The text, for which Judge Miguel Colmenero has been a speaker, thus delays the final verdict of the high court on the case of the entity’s “black” cards, for which its former president Rodrigo Rato was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for misappropriation.
A crime for which the fourth section of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court also found 64 other former members of the leadership of Caja Madrid guilty, including its former president Miguel Blesa.
The sentence, handed down in February of last year, assured that all of them were aware of the legal and statutory provision of the corporate card, despite which “they gave it the particular use they deemed convenient against the flow of the box”, a ” decrease” estimated at more than 12 million euros for which he pointed directly to Blesa.
But the death of the person who was in charge of the entity between 1996 and 2010 gave a turn to the proceedings last July, and although his criminal liability was extinguished, civil liability remained.
As the room now recalls, on May 22 the Supreme Court studied the writings of the convicted, on whom sentences of between four years and three months in prison weigh, behind closed doors, after none of the parties requested the celebration of a preview similar to that of other cases such as Noós.
Apart from that of Rato, who requested that his sentence be annulled, considering that it is based on evidence “contaminated with illegality”, the court must rule on the appeals, among others, of the former vice president of Caja Madrid José Antonio Moral Santín (four years prison) and the former general director of the media, Ildefonso Sánchez Barcoj (two and a half years in prison).
But also on the popular accusation exercised by the Inter-Union Credit Confederation (CIC), which requests that Rato and Sánchez Barcoj be sentenced for unfair administration, a crime of which they were acquitted in the previous instance due to lack of conclusive evidence.
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