Miguel Ángel Ramírez, acquitted by the Court in the Canarian Comprehensive Security case

According to the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, the acquittal ruling also extends to the person who succeeded him as administrator of the firm, Héctor de Armas. The Chamber notified this Monday the sentence, which extends over 74 pages and expresses the majority opinion of the Chamber. The attached resolution the dissenting vote of a member of the court that was favorable to convict the two defendants for the tax crimes and crimes against Social Security for which they had been accused.

The prosecution requested 21 years in prison for Miguel Ángel Ramírez and five for the other accused. It was considered proven that the head of SIC had defrauded Social Security of 30.06 million euros between 2009 and 2017 and had evaded the payment of 6.60 million to the Treasury between 2009 and 2013.

The acquittal ruling, entering into the analysis of the previous questions raised by the defense, concludes that criminal action cannot be considered brought for the crimes that cover fiscal years from 2010 to 2013 and for the social security contributions from 2009 to 2012, for not having taken the obligatory and required declaration for these facts from those investigated during the investigation. Without such a declaration, says the Chamber, the delimitation of the punishable basis is not possible, nor the subsequent accusation and, even less, their conviction, since they would be exposed to a clear and decisive situation of defenselessness.

This decision of the Court is a consequence of the declaration of nullity of the investigation of the case during the time that he was in charge of the Court (Instruction No. 8 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) and in charge of this case the now former magistrate Salvador Alba, whose actions procedural is invalidated in its entirety.

The Court, to make such a decision, It is based on the proven facts of the sentence that sentenced Alba to six years in prison for prevarication, bribery and falsification of documents, issued by the Criminal Chamber of the TSJC on September 10, 2019 and confirmed by the Supreme Court. The Chamber assumes that “on the same day” that Alba took office in Instruction Eight, he issued a resolution agreeing to the taking of statements from businessman Miguel Ángel Ramírez and one of his then collaborators as defendants, without specifying anything. more, and with a “spurious and crooked” purpose, unrelated to the investigation.

For this reason, the Court considers both that resolution and the statements made before the now former magistrate Alba to be contrary to law. On the other hand, the Court understands that, with respect to the 2009 fiscal year, there is no criminal violation, because the tax base that should be taken as a reference is not delimited. «It has not been proven that the total amount that SIC failed to pay to the Tax Agency in the 2009 fiscal year as unpaid withholdings of the amounts that it was obliged to withhold on account of the personal income tax of its workers for the payment of such hours extraordinary or other concepts included in subkey L 01 of model 190 such as per diems exceeding 120,000 euros,” reads the ruling.