The Military Chamber of the Supreme Court has annulled the sanction imposed on a Civil Guard agent who works in Lanzarote, and who faced an internal disciplinary file for "violation of professional secrecy." The file concluded in 2013 with a sanction of loss of five days' pay, "as the author of a serious offense," and in the first instance, the Central Military Court rejected the appeal of the affected party.
However, the Supreme Court has now sided with him, understanding that there was no such violation of professional secrecy. On one hand, because the documents in question were "irrelevant" and he had not accessed them by reason of his position. On the other hand, because he forwarded them to a superior, within the framework of another disciplinary file that had been previously opened against him, so he thereby exercised "his legitimate right to defense."
The events date back to October 11, 2011, when this agent presented to the Lanzarote Airport Section a letter addressed to the general of the Canary Islands Zone, along with the statement made by three civil guards within the framework of that other disciplinary file opened against him, also for a "very serious" offense. The ruling does not specify what motivated the opening of the first file, but simply that the agent used statements made by three agents within the framework of the same to "prove" an alleged "infraction" and exercise his right of defense.
"An infraction that he considered of special gravity"
"The sanctioned party used the information in the exercise of his fundamental right of defense by communicating an infraction that he considered of special gravity and that could have been decisive in the file for a very serious offense in which he was implicated," the Supreme Court chamber argues.
"As the appellant rightly points out," the ruling states, the agent had "access to the revealed information not in the performance of the functions that are proper to him as a Civil Guard," but as a party "in the sanctioning file." To this he adds that "said documentation does not contain data relating to the service, but exclusively refers" to that disciplinary file, "and said information was delivered to him without any indication or mark revealing its classification and even less the degree of the same, in addition to not being provided with express instructions on its use, conservation or transmission."
Furthermore, it emphasizes that "at no time" was there "a breach of security, integrity or confidentiality of the information contained" in those documents, since what the affected party did was contribute them as an annex to a disciplinary report, which in itself has legal protection over its confidentiality. "The report is addressed to the competent hierarchical superior, specifically the General Chief of the Canary Islands Zone, so the information is not transmitted outside the Institution, nor through a non-regulatory channel, nor to a person not competent in principle to know it."
