David Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, brother of the Prime Minister, has been sentenced to nine years of disqualification for a crime of administrative misconduct due to alleged irregularities in his hiring, in 2017, at the Diputación of Badajoz. The Provincial Court has imposed the same penalty on nine other defendants, while Miguel Ángel Gallardo, former president of the Diputación of Badajoz and former leader of the Extremaduran PSOE, has been sentenced to 18 years of disqualification for being considered responsible for two crimes of misconduct.
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The ruling considers that the 11 convicted participated in one way or another in the creation of “an unnecessary and content-empty public employment position” in the public body “with the aim that it would be occupied” by Pedro Sánchez’s relative. The sentence also points out that “it has not been proven […] that any specific person or persons exerted pressure or influence on the accused” to design the position that Sánchez ultimately occupied.
The prosecution and the defenses requested the acquittal of Sánchez, Gallardo, and the rest of the defendants, while some accusations, including those brought by PP and Vox, raised their penalty requests to six years in prison at the end of the hearing. The disqualification penalty means that the 11 convicted will permanently lose the public job or position they held and will be unable to access another similar one during the time of the penalty. The sentence, which is appealable, is known at a particularly complex moment for the Government, with numerous open judicial fronts and its parliamentary partners demanding explanations for the corruption cases affecting the PSOE.
In the 377-page sentence, the court concludes that there are “multiple” indications that none of the accused was unaware of a “criminal plan devised by the highest authorities” of the Diputación to favor David Sánchez. The judges add that all of them acted “in collusion” and following a “preconceived plan” that allowed the creation of a position “unnecessary and empty of content” and that, moreover, they awarded it to the president’s brother ignoring the principles of merit and ability and prioritizing Pedro Sánchez’s relative’s interest over the general interest.
In this regard, they add that the administrative file to create the position was prepared solely to give legality to a decision made beforehand. They emphasize that the criteria used to evaluate the candidates were set when all their resumes were already known and that the merits of the president’s brother were prioritized. “The accused knew the injustice of the resolution and set in motion a plan devised to achieve the administrative hiring of the accused as managerial staff. In this way, they designed an ad hoc procedure, aimed at creating positions — nonexistent until then in the administrative organization chart — whose creation was neither urgent nor necessary,” the ruling stresses.
Regarding the subsequent change of the title of the position finally awarded to David Sánchez, from coordinator of the province’s conservatories to head of the Performing Arts Office, the court concludes that it was done to adapt it to the professional preferences of the Prime Minister’s relative as “a tailored suit” and that, for this, the Diputación officials intervened again to “give an appearance of legality” to all of it.
The Chamber concludes that the procedures and controls were “purely cosmetic” and that both the position awarded to David Sánchez and the one later given to Luis Carrero, a friend of the president’s brother who until then worked at the Moncloa Palace, were put at the service of private interests. Positions, the ruling adds, funded with public money so that both could dedicate themselves “to the activities they fancied, without any control.”
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