The trial against the Seprona sergeant in Lanzarote, Gloria Moreno, already has a date. According to the newspaper La Provincia, the hearing will be held in the last week of October in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, before the First Section of the Provincial Court. The Prosecutor's Office is asking for the sergeant to serve 4 years in prison, 3 years of disqualification from employment or public office, and a fine of 3,600 euros for an alleged crime of falsifying an official document.
The events that will be judged began in November 2015, when Sergeant Moreno sent a letter to the chief captain of the Civil Guard company in Costa Teguise denouncing alleged irregularities by a colleague and subordinate of hers in Seprona, whom she accused of having warned a poacher of shearwaters of an inspection that was going to be carried out in Alegranza.
Moreno's letter led to an internal investigation in the Civil Guard and also to judicial proceedings, but both ended up being dismissed after concluding that there were no "indications of the possible commission of the crime reported" by the sergeant. It was then that the affected party denounced Gloria Moreno, who will now be in the dock for these events.
"False statements" and "knowingly"
In its qualification document, the Prosecutor's Office maintains that the Seprona sergeant made these accusations against a colleague "knowing that her statements did not correspond to reality" and that they were "false statements".
Specifically, Moreno claimed that a collaborator of the Doñana Biological Station was the one who passed on the information to her. According to Moreno's version, this scientist told her that one of the poachers - who was later reported by Seprona and a few months ago was convicted - told him that he had received a call from a civil guard, warning him of the action that was going to take place in Alegranza.
In the letter that she presented to the captain at the time, the sergeant stated that she had asked the agent if he knew this person and that he told her yes, that they were "friends for a long time", but that he "did not remember" if he had called him or not", and that "on some occasion he had told him that one day they were going to get a scare and they were going to be caught", but that he "did not call to warn him".
However, after the investigation that was carried out on these events, the Prosecutor's Office concludes that the sergeant included false statements "knowingly", for which she is now accused of documentary falsification. In the trial, both the agent who had been accused by Moreno - and who is appearing as a private prosecutor - as well as the reported hunter and the person who supposedly informed him that there had been a 'tip-off' will testify as witnesses.
