The Prosecutor’s Office asks for up to two years in prison for the four accused managers and a fine of more than 84 million for the company
MADRID, 2 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Iberdrola Generación has already deposited the bail of 192 million euros set at the time by the judge of the National High Court (AN) Ismael Moreno when opening an oral proceeding against the company and four directors, considering that in 2013 the company “devised and put into operation of a system to increase the price of the energy it sold” in order to “provoke a rise in the price of electricity and harm consumers”.
According to the legal sources consulted by Europa Press, Iberdrola Generación has secured the 192,231,272 euros claimed by the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 2, of which 84,891,272 euros are to guarantee the payment of the fines and the 107,340,000 remaining euros to ensure the payment of the civil responsibilities that arise, as stated in the order where he agreed to open an oral trial.
In addition, to each of the four executives –the director of Energy Management and those responsible for Asset Management; Optimization, Resource Management and Trading; and Short-Term Markets and Global Generation– imposed a bail of 107,534,666 euros, of which 194,666 euros for fines and 107,340,000 euros for civil liabilities.
Moreno then explained that the amount of the civil liability would serve “as compensation for the electric energy marketers and the rest of the natural and legal persons who prove, as final consumers of electric energy or guarantors of energy prices, that they have suffered or been affected by the increase in energy prices in the period from November 30 to December 23”. All the defendants will respond “jointly and severally” to that amount, he specified.
It was on July 13 when the investigating judge sent the company and its directors to the bench for an alleged crime related to the market and consumers for allegedly concocting a “artifice” to increase the price of electricity.
For this reason, the anti-corruption prosecutor Antonio Romeral claims in his indictment up to two years in prison for the four directors and a fine of more than 84 million euros for the company.
According to Romeral, Iberdrola Generación, “with the aim of causing an increase in the price of electricity and harming consumers, devised and put into operation a system to increase the price of the energy it sold, beyond what should have resulted from the free concurrence of supply and demand”.
In order to obtain this higher price in the electricity market, the prosecutor reported, “from November 30, 2013 and until December 23, 2013, the price of electricity offers corresponding to its hydroelectric plants in Duero, Sil and Tajo, at a level above the daily market price that prevented operations from being matched”.
And this, he stressed, “despite the increase experienced in those days by the prices of electricity in the cash market, which placed it at an optimal opportunity cost.”
Romeral explained that “the consequence of the artifice devised and carried out by the defendants was the increase in the price of electricity by at least 7,156 euros/MWh”, which meant a profit of 21,222,818 euros for Iberdrola Generación for the 2,965,779 megawatts that it dispatched in that period.
According to his calculations, it would also have resulted in economic damage of 107,340,000 euros, of which 10.5 million would correspond to the twenty distribution companies that appear as injured in the case, while the rest of the damage would have been borne by consumers with variable-price contracts and insurance companies that covered fixed-price contracts.
Anti-corruption maintained that, although Iberdrola Generación would have concocted this maneuver, those in charge of materializing it would have been the four accused directors by formulating offers for electricity from the Duero, Sil and Tajo hydroelectric plants, a situation that — underlined– determined that these plants stop producing energy.
The Prosecutor’s Office specified that, “in the period between November 2 and November 29, 2013, the dispatched offer did not exceed 70 euros/MWh, concentrating 91.48% of it -866.4 GW- – in a price band of less than 50 euros/MWh”, while “regarding the energy not dispatched, 48.13% of the energy offered –1,217.3 GW– was in some bands prices higher than 80 euros/MWh”.
Instead, it continued, in the investigated period, from November 30 to December 23, 2013, “32.54% of the energy dispatched -183.7 GW– was in a price band above 80 euro/MWh”. And, “of the energy offered not dispatched, 2,655.9 GW, 94.33% -2,505.3 GW- was in price bands above 80 euros/MWh”, he completes.
In this context, Romeral recalled that “as of December 24, 2013, the change in weather conditions due to strong storms and wind caused a reduction in the price of energy due to the significant contribution of renewable sources.”
