On April 11, the controversial lawyer José Emilio Rodríguez Menéndez faced the Court of Justice of the Provincial Court of Madrid. He is accused of allegedly defrauding four people and appropriating 112,995 euros. A trial that should have been held in 2021, as elcierredigital.com has already announced, and which, due to the defendant’s health problems, was postponed three times, until now. This process could lead the lawyer, famous for his leaks, to prison
On May 6, 2021, the controversial lawyer Jose Emilio Rodriguez Menendez At the age of 70, he would have had to face a court of law again, after leading a life riddled with mystery, escapes, failed weddings and two criminal convictions.
However, this trial did not take place due to the health problems that the defendant claimed. now almost Two years laterthe hearing has been held in which Emilio Rodríguez Menéndez is accused of cheatallegedly, four people and appropriate 112.995 euros. An accusation that he has strongly denied.
The most important trial of his life
Jose Emilio Rodriguez Menendez (Madrid, 1951) is one of the most controversial figures of recent decades. She has starred in controversies both in the courts of Justice and in the media and in the political arena.
His name first appeared in the media at the end of the seventies and was linked to politics when he orbited around the Adolfo Suarez’s UCD in the first local and regional elections in the recent history of Spain, in May 1979. Shortly after his name was associated with scandals, when he was sentenced in Santiago de Chile, in the middle of the era of Augusto Pinochetfor fraud, bigamy and illegal exercise of the professions of lawyer and psychologist.
His real leap to popularity came when he took up the defense of Snow Soldevilaknown as Sweet Neus, accused of ending her husband’s life, Juan Vila Carbonella member of Fuerza Nueva with whom he had six children.
of the leaks
Rodríguez Menéndez was sentenced for making public the famous video starring the then director of the newspaper The world, Pedro J. Ramírez, in 1997. In fact, he was sentenced in 2004 to two years in prison for violating his privacy, although he fled the country and in 2005 was arrested in Argentina. However, the lawyer was released 24 hours later while the Government of Spain agreed to request his extradition.
Emilio Rodriguez Menendez.
A year later, in 2006, he tried to enter Spain, but was finally arrested and transferred to a prison in Salamanca after trying to escape police checkpoints at Lisbon airport. José Emilio Rodríguez Menéndez had at that time in force two search warrantsone of them for the crime committed after the dissemination of the video of Pedro J. and another for fraud against the public Treasury.
The criminal chamber of the Supreme Court raised his sentence for continued tax offense six to 10 years in prison considering that four crimes had been committed. After entering prison in 2008, in August of that same year he escaped taking advantage of a permit that a prison surveillance judge had granted him.
The lawyer had requested this permit after serving a quarter of the sentence, an essential condition to be able to enjoy this benefit. Rodríguez Menéndez was released from the Teixeiro prison on August 18 and should have returned on the 22nd, which is a breach of sentence of which the National Police, the Civil Guard, the duty judge and the Penitentiary Surveillance realized.
Emilio and his wife Vanessa Palomares, whom he married in 2005 shortly before entering prison, they left for France and then Paraguay. They ended up back in Buenos Aires, where the Spanish police tracked them down and arrested the lawyer shortly after, in October 2010, as he was leaving an apartment in the well-known Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo.
In 2012 he was arrested in Lisbon and imprisoned in Salamanca temporarily. Spain demanded his extradition, but the Argentine court denied it. He entered Spain again in 2014, when the sentences and the crime for the escape had prescribed.
Now, the Prosecutor’s Office accuses him of allegedly defrauding four people and appropriating 112,995 euros. And it is that Rodriguez Menendez would have led the complainants to believe that he was starting up a buying and selling business in Buenos Aires with the YPF oil company in 2004. He allegedly assured them that they would have high profitability by having contacts in Argentina, the country where he had lived for years. A business that he himself would take care of as his legal representative.
defend yourself
During the trial held on the morning of April 11, 2023 at the Provincial Court of Madrid, Rodriguez Menendez He entered the room with his robe on, a gesture that seemed to indicate that he was going to defend himself, although he finally had the support of his office partner. Juan Carlos Gomez Ballester.
In 2021, the lawyer for the complainants, Rafael Bellido Cuesta, requested for the first crime of organization and special disqualification, the penalty of eight years in prison; three years for falsifying a public document; six years for misappropriation; six years for fraud; six years, likewise, for money laundering as well as a fine of 297,000 euros; two years for the usurpation of functions; six years for procedural fraud, three years for coercion; and two years for “phishing”. They all added up 36 yearswhich, if found guilty by all, would remain at 24, triple the largest sentence, which would be 8 years.
Now, almost two years later, the court has agreed that he should be tried only for the crime of fraud and not by the others requested by the lawyer for the private prosecution. A crime for which the Prosecutor’s Office has requested four years in prison, a fine of 3,600 euros and compensation of more than 100,000.
For his part, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, considering the sentence insufficient, has requested eight years in jail for the scam. and although has decided not to attribute the crimes of criminal organization, “phishing« and money launderinghas requested the conviction for falsification of a public document, usurpation of functions, coercion and procedural fraud, which would raise the sentence to 21 years.
The alleged scam of which he is now accused
The plaintiffs against Rodríguez Menéndez are Angel Luis E., Isaac S., Cristina R. y Jesus v., all of them “investors” in a non-existent business that the lawyer supposedly invented. The first two would have paid the amount of 33,100 euros each, and the second two the same amount between them, with the promise that an oil purchase-sale business was being launched in Buenos Aires, Argentina with the company Argentine oil company YPF, according to the private prosecution.
A total of 99,300 euros would have been invested in the constitution of three companies (Energy Global Investment, SA; Latin American Petrolium Co. and Hidrocarburos American Co.), of which the defendant, Rodríguez Menéndez, would be the legal representative, in addition to the business intermediary.
“These three companies would be constituted with the purpose that through them the purchase-sale and supply of oil with the state energy entity YPF“, maintains the indictment. For this reason, he requests, in his indictment against the lawyer, the imposition of a sentence of 4 years in prison and a fine of 3,600 euros for an alleged crime of fraud of 73,700 euros – an amount that differs that of the complainants – to the four people mentioned.
Rodríguez Menéndez, who currently practices law in Madrid despite being suspended, was convicted twice in the 2000s.
The first was in July 2002. The First Section of the Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced him to two years in prison for the distribution, in 1997, of a video with sexual content of the then director of The world, Pedro J. Ramírezclassified as a crime against privacy.
The second took place in February 2005. The court of Section 17 of the same Hearing –of which the former mayoress of Madrid was a part, Manuela Carmena– sentenced him for a continuous crime against the Public Treasury to 6 years in prison, a fine of 24,753,698.52 euros and compensation of 1,839,716.85 euros to the Treasury, in addition to suspending his rights to practice the profession during the time of the sentence.
This new sentence, despite not being firm, reactivated the previous one, which was. Consequently, the Provincial Court decreed, in June 2005, his immediate imprisonment. But Emilio Rodríguez Menéndez escaped prison by fleeing to Argentina, where he was arrested in July 2005 and imprisoned in a prison in the country until a judge released him.
Rodríguez Menéndez, however, returned to Spain incognito just 10 months later, in May 2006, to visit his mother who had fallen seriously ill. He then he was arrested.
In October 2006, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court raised the sentence for the crime against the Public Treasury from 6 to 10 years in prison, estimating that instead of a single continuous crime, four crimes had occurred, which corresponded to four sentences of two and a half years each. In total, he was sentenced to 7 and a half years in prison.
He entered prison and remained in prison until August 2008, when he escaped again, once again to Argentina, taking advantage of a four-day permit from the Galician Teixeiro prison, where he was serving a sentence.
The Spanish authorities tried, without success, to extradite him on several occasions. Rodriguez Menendez He returned to Spain at the beginning of 2014, once the two convictions, as well as the escape from the Galician prison, had prescribed. Magazine Interview He caught it in the Cava Baja in the Madrid neighborhood of La Latina, having dinner at a famous restaurant.
