Abstract
In this chapter, we will sketch the regime of criminal responsibility of political decision makers in Spain, for decisions related to their positions. As in other countries of Southern Europe, international pressure on budgetary control has increasingly pushed Spanish fiscal policy beyond national political discretion, and towards increasing criminalization of the mismanagement of public funds by public officials, sometimes understood as any infraction of budgetary requirements. On the light of our hypothetical study case, we will highlight the prominent but not unproblematic role, in the prosecution of similar cases, of the charges of embezzlement (malversación) and abuse of office (prevaricación) on the one side, and bribery (cohecho), influence peddling (tráfico de influencias), and illegal political party funding offences on the other. National peculiarities regarding special sanctions applicable to politicians, as well as immunities and other limitations of criminal liability, particularly when regards to corruption-related cases, will be also briefly discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
On the use of criminal procedures for political ends in general, and on the Spanish criminal justice system during Franco's dictatorship, see: O. Kirchheimer, Political Justice: The Use of Legal Procedure for Political Ends, 1961 (Princeton University Press, Princeton); G. Portilla Contreras, La consagración del Derecho Penal de autor durante el franquismo. El Tribunal Especial para la Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo, 2010 (Comares, Granada); I. Tebar Rubio-Manzanares, ‘El ‘derecho penal del enemigo’: de la teoría actual a la práctica represiva del ‘Nuevo Estado’ franquista’, in: 13 Pasado y Memoria: Revista de Historia Contemporánea, 2014.
- 2.
El País, 9 February 2012, ‘No malgastarás dinero público’, www.elpais.com.
- 3.
Against the proposal of the Conservative Party, the Social Democratic Party argued that ‘it is not the same to engage in deficit to maintain […] the public provision of healthcare, education, aids to families with dependants, and social welfare for people in difficulties, as to engage in deficit to organise a Formula 1 race or to build pharaonic public works’, see El País, 18 January 2012, ‘El PSOE arremete contra la ‘ocurrencia’ del ministro de Hacienda’, www.elpais.com.
- 4.
A. Embid Irujo, ‘La justiciabilidad de los actos de gobierno (de los actos políticos a la responsabilidad de los poderes públicos)’ in Estudios Sobre la Constitución Española. Homenaje el Profesor Eduardo García de Enterría 1991 (Civitas, Madrid), p. 2702; J. I. Lacasta Zabalza, ‘La idea de la responsabilidad en la actual cultura constitucional española’, 10 Derechos y Libertades, 2001.
- 5.
E. García de Enterría, ‘La lucha contra las inmunidades del poder en el Derecho administrativo (poderes discrecionales, poderes de gobierno, poderes normativos’, in 38 Revista de Administración Pública, 1962; B. Marcheco Acuña, ‘El control jurisdiccional de los actos políticos del Gobierno en el derecho español’, 2 Revista Internacional de Estudios de Derecho Procesal y Arbitraje, 2015.
- 6.
A. Herzog, ‘El “revival” de la doctrina de los actos políticos exentos de control judicial: el Auto del TS inadmitiendo el recurso contra nombramientos CGPJ’, www.hayderecho.com, 8 May 2014; F. G. Gómez de Mercado, ‘El control de los actos políticos del Gobierno (I)’, www.hayderecho.com, 24 March 2013.
- 7.
F. Jiménez Sánchez, ‘Boom urbanístico y corrupción política en España’, 14 Mediterráneo Económico, 2008, p. 263, 268; J. L. Diez Ripollés/A. Gómez Céspedes, ‘La corrupción urbanística: Estrategias de análisis’, 6 Revista Española de Investigación Criminológica, 2008.
- 8.
J. Barnes, ‘La distribución de competencias legislativas en materia de urbanismo y vivienda’, in 79 (2) Revista Vasca de Administración Pública, 2007; A. Melón Muñoz, ‘Algunas consideraciones sobre la distribución y el ejercicio de competencias en materia de urbanismo y ordenación del territorio’, in: Olaizola Nogales et al. (eds.), Corrupción y urbanismo, 2008 (Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao).
- 9.
This was the case, for example, of the recent building of the Puente de la Constitución de Cádiz, one of the biggest bridges in Europe, with a cost of more than 500 million euros, with little participation of the local governments of the cities involved.
- 10.
The Spanish Criminal Code was substantially amended in 2015 (Ley Orgánica 1/2015). The text of the articles quoted in this chapter correspond to the official translation to English published in 2013 by the Ministry of Justice, but those that have been modified since then have been updated here according to the new wording. See: http://www.mjusticia.gob.es/cs/Satellite/Portal/es/servicios-ciudadano/documentacion-publicaciones/publicaciones/traducciones-derecho-espanol.
- 11.
In the Spanish original text, the single provisions of the Criminal Code are called Artículos. The translation used here, however, sometimes refers to them as ‘Sections’. To avoid misunderstandings, ‘Article’ shall be used instead here.
- 12.
C. Martell Pérez-Alcalde, in: Quintero Olivares (ed.), Comentario a la reforma penal del 2015, 2015, (Tirant, Valencia), p. 693.
- 13.
After the 2015 reform, it is still to be seen what importance is given to budgetary provisions. With the previous regulation, it was common to require the violation of concrete budgetary proceedings and not just the manifest breach of general principles of efficiency. Since the new regulation is basically similar to the German offence of Untreue, there seems to be more room for considering clearly wrong decisions under the scope of the crime. But it is likely that concrete budgetary provisions (e.g., on the appropriate evaluations, reports, projects, approvals, etc.) will still be required. Historically, there has been not much regard for the breach of general principles of efficiency as sufficient basis for embezzlement. Here is a particularly shocking example: in 2009, the Supreme Court understood that selling for less than 1 euro half of the stock of the Municipal Funerary of Madrid, valued in more than 7.5 million euros, was not embezzlement; even if the proceedings were clearly incorrect, since that value never really got to be part of the public assets, that was not considered diversion of public funds (but mere ‘lost profits’ beyond the scope of embezzlement).
- 14.
A. Nieto Martín, ‘Despilfarro público y Derecho Penal’, www.almacendederecho.org, 3 September 2015; C. Sánchez Mato, ‘Endeudamiento urbano. La insostenibilidad social de la deuda municipal de Madrid’, 130 Papeles de Relaciones Ecosociales y Cambio Global, 2015.
- 15.
Nieto Martín (note 14).
- 16.
N. De La Mata Barranco, ‘La gestión irregular del presupuesto público y la malversación’, www.almacendederecho.org, 7 March 2016.
- 17.
It is interesting to contrast those views with the fact that national economic sovereignty and democratic control of public finance is in itself, however, very limited in the context of the European Union and of multilateral commercial agreements such as the TTIP. Monetary policies have been delegated to the Central European Bank, and the margin to decide on substantively different fiscal policies has been severely restricted in Southern Europe through the different treaties and the austerity-based agreements after the crisis. In such a context of strict deficit control, one of the differences between wasting the actually available money and resorting to debt seems to be that debt might entail different institutional sanctions, as well as the payment of interest rates and even an endless dependency on new indebtedness.
- 18.
A. Gili Pascual, ‘Pago de comisiones en el ámbito de los negocios y kick-backs: entre la administración desleal, la apropiación indebida y la corrupción privada’, in Cuadernos de Política Criminal, 2013, 109, p. 95.
- 19.
A. Nieto Martín, ‘La corrupción en el sector privado (reflexiones desde el ordenamiento español a la luz del Derecho comparado’, in 10 Revista Penal, 2002.
- 20.
De La Mata Barranco (note 16).
- 21.
Spanish Supreme Court Judgement (Sentencia del Tribunal Supremo, STS from here onwards) 226/06.
- 22.
STS 647/02.
- 23.
The administrative doctrine of the ‘political and government acts’ is a century-long debate that constitutes one of the trickiest parts of the regulation of abuse of office in Spain. It implies a quite artificial distinction between administrative and political matters. As a doctrine from administrative law theory it was imported from post-revolutionary France, and profusely used by the different Spanish governments to exclude certain areas of decision from judicial review. While it is a doctrine considered outdated after the constitutional recognition of equal access to justice, there remain some uses of it, including the interpretation of what an administrative resolution is for the purposes of criminal abuse of office. While it seems difficult (and probably beyond the boundaries of legal theory) to define what is a political or government act, those are supposed to include a) legislative activities and b) acts of political direction, that would include things such as (i.) The functions assigned to the Government in Art. 97 of the Spanish Constitution (‘The Government shall conduct domestic and foreign policy, civil and military administration and the defence of the State. It exercises executive authority and the power of statutory regulations in accordance with the Constitution and the laws’); (ii.) Acts concerning the relations between different constitutional bodies (the executive and the Congress, for example); (iii.) Drafting legislative proposals to be submitted to Parliament. All those matters would initially fall beyond the scope of criminal law via abuse of office, but not necessarily out of the scope of review by the administrative courts (for example: executive decrees can be reviewed by administrative courts). Purely political activities without a legal manifestation would only be politically accountable (for example, in the parliaments). As for local governments, since the Constitution recognises their autonomy, they can perform acts of government with potentially similar effects.
- 24.
TSJ Cataluña 37/2014.
- 25.
Auto del Tribunal Supremo 2809/2015.
- 26.
Auto de la Audiencia Provincial de Sevilla 4988/2014, 18 September 2015.
- 27.
STS 1629/00; STS 1223/04; STS 226/06.
- 28.
Sentencia de la Audiencia Provincial de Toledo 65/08.
- 29.
Auto del Tribunal Superior de Justicia de la C. Valenciana 13/2015.
- 30.
A. M. Javato Martín, ‘El concepto de funcionario y autoridad a efectos penales’, 23 Revista Jurídica de Castilla y León, 2011.
- 31.
STS 692/2008.
- 32.
N. De La Mata Barranco, La respuesta a la corrupción pública. Tratamiento penal de la conducta de los particulares que contribuyen a ella, 2004 (Comares, Granada), p. 9.
- 33.
STS 480/04; STS 537/02; STS 2025/01.
- 34.
The title in the Code is ‘Fraud and illegal taxations’. The offences of illegal taxations are less interesting to our purposes; they read as follows:
Art. 437: ‘The authority or public officer who directly or indirectly demands undue fees, tariffs or fees, or those in an amount exceeding those legally set, shall be punished, without prejudice to the reimbursement he is obliged to carry out, with the penalties of a fine from six to twenty- four months and suspension from public employment and office for a term of six months to four years.’
Art. 438: ‘The authority or public officer who, abusing his office, were to commit any offence of swindling, or fraud to the Social Security System as foreseen in [Article] 307, shall incur the penalties respectively stated for these in the upper half, which may increase to the higher in one degree, and special barring from public employment and office and from the right to public suffrage for a term from three to nine years, unless a more severe penalty is provided for those conducts in other [Articles] of this Code.’
- 35.
STS 841/2013; STS 1537/2003; STS 166/2014.
- 36.
STS 657/2013.
- 37.
Sentencia de la Audiencia Provincial de Palma de Mallorca 1165/2012.
- 38.
See Art. 17, 18 and 19 of the Standing Orders of the Congress of Deputies, http://www.congreso.es/portal/page/portal/Congreso/Congreso/Hist_Normas/Norm/standing_orders_02.pdf; for more details see J.L. Martínez López-Muñiz, ‘Ética pública y deber de abstención en la actuación administrativa’, Derecho PUCP: Revista de la Facultad de Derecho, 2011, 67; C. Ruiz-Rico Ruiz, ‘El poder parlamentario y sus límites: conflicto de intereses, extralimitaciones y transparencia’, www.federalismi.it, Rivista di Diritto Pubblico Italiano, Comparato, Europeo, 2014, 23.
- 39.
STS 1887/02, 13-11.
- 40.
Sentencia de la Audiencia Provincial de Islas Baleares 5/1997.
- 41.
A previous wording of the offence limited its scope to those who had the official duty to inform about the contract or operation (e.g.: city council architects). That caused a paradoxical situation where the provision was applicable to those with the duty to inform, but not to those with the duty to decide. This was solved in 2010 by removing this mention to the duty to inform and introducing a more general allusion to intervene, due to the official’s office.
- 42.
In June 2017, three members of the municipal government of Madrid, including its head of finance, Carlos Sanchez Mato, were indicted on charges of abuse of office and embezzlement, on the ground that they had ordered around 100.000 euros to be spent on the anti-corruption audit report of an annual local tennis tournament, which costed 7 million euros in 2017. The lawsuit, filed by the previously governing Popular Party (responsible for approving the annual celebration of this tennis event during its mandate), was clearly motivated by a desire to push these members of the council to resign; the internal normative of the party currently in office in the city, Ahora Madrid, establishes an obligation to do so when a member is formally indicted of corruption-related offences.
- 43.
Venice Commission, Position of Spain regarding its new legislation (Organic Law 15/2015 of 16th October) aimed at the effective enforcement of the Constitutional Court’s judgements, 2016, available at: http://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-REF(2016)034-e (last accessed 7 November 2016).
- 44.
Ministerio de Hacienda, Presentation of the Organic Law on Budgetary Stability and Financial Sustainability of Public Administrations, 2015, available at: http://www.minhap.gob.es/Documentacion/Publico/GabineteMinistro/Presentaciones/LEY%20ESTABILIDAD%20PRESUPUESTARIA/en_LOEPSF-WEB%20MINHAP%2030-4-12_rev.pdf (last accessed 7 November 2016).
- 45.
El País, 5 November 2016, ‘Hacienda amenaza a Sánchez Mato con suspenderlo por su plan económico’, www.elpais.com.
- 46.
M.A. Presno Linera, ‘Inviolabilidad, inmunidad y aforamiento, ¿garantías o privilegios?’, www.eldiario.es, 29 June 2014.
- 47.
Sentencia del Tribunal Constitucional 51/1985.
- 48.
Presno Linera (note 45).
- 49.
M. A. Presno Linera, ‘¿Prerrogativas o privilegios parlamentarios?’, www.atlanticaxxii.com, 22 April 2013.
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Maroto Calatayud, M. (2017). Criminal Liability of Political Decision-Makers in Spain. In: Zimmermann, F. (eds) Criminal Liability of Political Decision-Makers. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52051-3_11
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