The biggest scam perpetrated on insurance companies in the province by simulating traffic accidents already has a trial date twelve years after the start of the investigations, substantiated in 18 volumes, and after several trips by different judicial bodies, including the Supreme Court. This last body determined that it should be the Court of Ourense, which had declared itself not competent to hear the case, and not a Criminal Court that passed sentence.
In the dock, in the month of September of this year and throughout a week, ten of the 50 people investigated in the so-called Operation Aleta, which was instructed throughout 2010 in the Trives Mixed Court for allegedly forming part of the framework to simulate false accidents between 2006 and 2011. The public accusation contemplates crimes of fraud, simulation of crime, forgery in commercial and official documents as well as receipt.
Those investigated jointly in some cases and separately in others supposedly faked accidents to collect compensation for a total loss or for vehicle repair. The prosecutor, in his qualification letter, lists 36 frauds between road exits, non-existent injuries or collisions. He blames Santos AG, the manager of a workshop in A Valenzá (Barbadás), as the alleged ringleader of the plot, for whom he requests the highest sentence, 13 years in prison.
The fraud, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, amounts to 348,000 euros.
The criminal chamber of the Hearing will finally be in charge of prosecuting the case after the Supreme Court agreed with the prosecutor, who appealed the decision of the highest judicial body of Ourense on October 16, 2018 for violation of the law, agreeing to the inhibition since he considered the application of article 250.1.5 of the Penal Code to be unjustified (scams of more than 50,000 euros).
The Court of 1st Instance and Instruction of Trives, in response to the provisional qualifications and the penalties requested, agreed to open an oral trial and determined the Provincial Court of Ourense as the competent body for the trial. For the Supreme Court, the decision of the court does not present any error, since, being some of the interested sentences of extension superior to the competence of the Criminal Court, it turned out that the competent body for the prosecution was the Provincial Court, since the sentence provided for in article 250.1 CP is between 1 and 6 years in prison and a fine.
According to the sentence, the considerations about whether or not it is pertinent to appreciate the aggravation described in article 250.1.5º of the Penal Code, or those related to the individualization of the sentence in the case of a continuing crime, “cannot be carried out until after the practice of the test in the plenary, under the principles of immediacy, publicity, orality and contradiction, so that, at a time as early as those prior to the celebration of that, it is not possible to rule out or exclude the application of those precepts, which, in the provisional approach of the indictments, determined the jurisdiction of the Court”.
“However -adds the sentence-, and without prejudice to what results from the plenary, it should be remembered that in the case of a continued crime, if the sum of the different frauds exceeds 50,000 euros, the determination of the penalty according to the total damage caused , leads to understand that the appropriate penalty is the one provided for in article 250.1 CP”.
The reason for establishing that other magistrates of the Court are to judge the matter is that, given the reasoning included in the contested order, the judges who issued it anticipated the exclusion of the claims of the accusations, according to the Supreme Court.
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