The controversial judge Salvador Alba has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for three crimes committed in the exercise of his office, for conspiring with an investigated party to harm his predecessor in office, the also magistrate Victoria Rosell, offering to dismiss the case against him in exchange for testifying against the judge.
The sentence issued by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands considers it proven that Alba incurred in crimes of judicial prevarication, bribery and falsehood in an official document, for which he is also imposed 18 years of disqualification, as well as the obligation to compensate Judge Rosell with 60,000 euros.
Although he was suspended from his duties when the oral trial was opened against him, until that moment Salvador Alba had continued to intervene as a magistrate of the Provincial Court in several corruption cases opened in Lanzarote, in many cases acting against the criteria of the investigating judge and the Prosecutor's Office. Among other things, he was the judge who signed the order lifting the precautionary closure of the Stratvs winery, and also the one that annulled the first recording of the Unión case, in a decision that was later revoked by the TSJC.
In addition, Alba was also the one who 'de-imputed' the lawyer Ignacio Calatayud in the case for the seizure of the Montaña Roja desalination plant, in which the former president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, is still awaiting trial for crimes of prevarication. That decision, which in this case could no longer be appealed, ended up having significant consequences in that case, since the Prosecutor's Office then decided that since it could not file charges against the one who had been identified as the "ideologue" of the seizure, it could not do so against the rest either. However, the procedure did continue with the popular accusation.
"The right to privacy cannot be invoked to protect crimes"
In the case that has now led to his conviction, Salvador Alba tried to have the recording that has been key to this sentence annulled, since in it he is heard talking to the businessman Miguel Ángel Ramírez, offering to dismiss the criminal case that had been opened against him in exchange for him declaring and providing documents against Victoria Rosell, whom Alba had replaced in the Court.
The recording was made by Ramírez himself, who met alone with Alba in his office at the Courts and decided to go with a recorder, so the magistrate claimed that his "right to privacy" had been violated. He used this same argument two years ago, when this case against him had already begun but he had not yet been removed from his position. At that time, as a judge of the Provincial Court, he had to resolve an appeal by Luis Lleó within the Unión case and decided to annul the first recording of the case, which was made by Carlos Espino when Fernando Becerra offered him a bribe on behalf of Lleó. However, both then when annulling his order and now when issuing his sentence, the TSJC has overturned the thesis of Salvador Alba.
"This protection of the right to privacy cannot be invoked to protect criminal conduct that is precisely manifested and planned within this conversation," the sentence states, which also dismisses the questions that Alba's defense had made about the "authenticity" and "integrity" of that recording, which has been subjected to different expert reports that certify its veracity.
Leaked to El Mundo and used by Soria
After that interview alone in the office, Alba formally summoned Ramírez to testify within the case in which he was being investigated, and in that statement he repeated what they had agreed in that previous meeting. Later, the newspaper El Mundo published part of the content of that statement and this was used by the former president of the PP in the Canary Islands, José Manuel Soria, to expand a complaint that he had filed against the magistrate Victoria Rosell, which at that time was pending admission or not to processing, providing that journalistic information.
During the trial, the private prosecution maintained that it was Alba himself who leaked that statement to the journalist from El Mundo, with whom it is proven that the judge maintained a "close personal relationship." For this reason, he asked that he also be convicted of a crime of revealing secrets. However, in this case the TSJC concludes that "despite the consistency of the incriminating evidence", it "cannot affirm" with the "required certainty" that it was the magistrate who divulged that information, so he acquits him of this crime.
Intended to "harm Rosell" and give "arguments" to Soria's complaint
Regarding the crime of bribery that it does consider proven, it emphasizes that it implies the "request for a favor or retribution of any kind", which in this case was "Ramírez's collaboration to provide him with the information and documents he needed, as well as his personal commitment to testify and do so in a certain way."
With this, the sentence indicates that Alba intended to "harm Victoria Rosell and contribute with arguments that could increase or favor the admission to processing" of the complaint that Soria had filed against the magistrate, and that was finally rejected.
In addition, the sentence also links to the crime of bribery the judge's offer to Ramírez to "introduce arguments" in the case against him "that would allow an eventual nullity of the proceedings, or the dismissal, including in this offer the possibility of the dismissal of the case through a substantive resolution, regardless of its factual justification and legal basis for this decision."
