The Supreme Court gave its decision Acquittal of a former OHLA executive sentenced to seven years in prison by the National Court with collecting four million euros through so-called irregular kickbacks. The man, a senior executive of the company in Algeria, was accused of transferring this money from the construction company through the corporate network of his property, starting in Andorra and ending in Panama.
According to the Supreme Court decision, which was accessible to El Periódico de España from the Prensa Ibérica group, the manager was convicted in 2022. fraud crime and another money laundering for agreeing to ‘bribery’ allegations while he was the company’s managing director in the region, which included “the payment of 23.30% of a 3% percentage of the project’s global amount after payment to OHL”.
In this way, and according to an internal investigation carried out by the company itself, the person in charge of OHLA (then still OHL) More than four million Euros were transferred in three years Some accounts he had in a Caribbean tax haven.
Although the National Court acquitted the businessman and his wife in 2021, a year later the matter reached the Appeals Chamber, and the court upheld the company’s appeal and sentenced the businessman to five years in prison for fraud and two more years in prison for the fine. laundering and will pay a fine of 3.5 million euros. But now the high court has decided to acquit the manager again, considering, among other things: Facts must be stated as crimes corruption in business life And? It wasn’t a crime then.
The Supreme Court’s decision dated January 11 states, “Proven facts, of course, do not constitute the crime of fraud.” “When the existence of the crime of corruption and fraud between individuals is eliminated, the accusation of money laundering is also eliminated, […] because the hidden money or assets must have been obtained due to a crime previously committed.”
A strategic tool
The project on which the alleged fraud and money laundering began was the construction of the Sonatrach Congress Center in Oran, which enlisted the cooperation of Roc Assistance, a Moroccan organization that would assist OHL through the “provision of strategic, logistics and logistics support” for this work. they required. Public relations services”.
According to the internal investigation, thought to be proven by the National Tribunal in 2022, the company and the manager reached a secret agreement under which approximately 4.3 million of the 18.3 million euros paid by the OHL would go to Edmonton Overseas. A company in Panama that he and his wife bought through another company in Andorra. He did so by taking advantage of his “position of privilege and trust” to defraud his company, the prosecution said.