The Criminal Chamber of the TS confirms the sentence of 6 years and 3 months in prison imposed on a labor lawyer who appropriated the 225,000 euros that amounted to compensation for unfair dismissal recognized from a client of his.
The lawyer is sentenced for continued crime of misappropriation aggravated by the value of the fraud (4 years and 3 months in prison and a fine of 7,875 euros) and continued crime of falsifying an official document by private individual (2 years in prison and a fine of 6,775 euros), as well as to return an additional 227,900 euros interests to the client.
According to the proven facts of the judgment of the Court of Barcelona, later confirmed by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, in 2012 the victim contracted the employment lawyer professional services accused in order to file a lawsuit for unfair dismissal and termination of contract against his company. The courts -first the Social Court, then the Catalan TSJ and finally the Supreme Court- ratified the unfair dismissal and they sentenced the company to pay compensation of 202,213 euros.
After gaining finality in the sentence, the Court issued in October 2015 an order to return the 202,213 euros (which the company had consigned to be able to appeal) in favor of the worker, who delivered to the lawyer, and in December of the same year settled the interest on the principal of the compensation, which amounted to 25,703.30 euros, issuing another return order for that amount in favor of the worker and delivered to the lawyer.
The accused lawyer, adds the account of the facts, “kept the amounts obtained through the repeated orders, which he collected directly or through another person or persons whom he entrusted with the collection process.”
In addition, “in order to delay as much as possible the arrival of the client’s knowledge of the collection made of the amounts recognized in his favor in the judgment, (the defendant) explained to him a series of procedural vicissitudes that he presented as impediments to payment, reinforcing his explanations through the delivery of photocopies that he said were of documents from the Social Court, when they were not, and whose photocopies, made by him or another person at his request, made reference” to the alleged presentation of a writ of protection before the Constitutional Court with suspension of the payment of amounts until the resolution thereof.
The Supreme Court considers that the evaluation of the evidence carried out by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia is “correct and reasonable” when it concludes that it was the defendant who collected the two payment orders issued in favor of his client, in view of the evidence documentary, and who was responsible for the documentary forgeryin this case, since “the crime of forgery not being a crime at his own hands, it is irrelevant whether it was the appellant who made the physical preparation of the photocopies or whether he entrusted the production to another person”.
“The accreditation that the defendant appropriated the funds paid to his client, shows that the documents (unreal according to the testimony given in plenary by the lawyer of the Administration of Justice) only served to cover up his action, being fully reasonable the inference that it must have been he who entrusted or addressed the making of the photocopies to justify to his client why he should not deliver the funds ”, indicates the Supreme Court.
For this reason, it rejects the appeal of the convicted lawyer, except for the penalty of a fine corresponding to the crime of documentary falsification, since the Court imposed an amount (13 months at a rate of 25 euros of daily quota) that was above what was requested by the prosecutor and the private prosecution, which violated the accusatory principle, for which it imposes a 9-month fine with a daily fee of 25 euros for this crime, maintaining the rest of the convictions and pronouncements.
