The magistrates point out that the closure of the investigation does not prevent the pending proceedings from being carried out
MADRID, 27 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Criminal Chamber of the National Court (AN) has revoked the extension of the investigations of the case ‘La Rueda de las Televisiones’ regarding the General Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE) and has declared the end of the investigation, in against the criteria of Judge Ismael Moreno, who had extended the investigation until 2023.
This plot was uncovered with a police operation in 2017 to dismantle a system by which several members of the SGAE would have defrauded around 100 million euros between 2006 and 2011 with the fraudulent registration of musical works, after complaints from different associations and individual members of the SGAE.
The registration of alleged modifications of free original works is being investigated, as well as copyrights and works placed in the name of third parties –in some cases they were not even musicians–, to broadcast them as background music on late-night television programs and bill for it.
The Criminal Chamber, in several cases to which Europa Press has had access, estimates the resources of the regional public television stations in Andalusia and Extremadura, “deeming the investigation of this case finished.” Even so, it specifies that “nothing would prevent” carrying out the proceedings that have been pending.
In July of this year, the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 2 agreed to extend the term for the conclusion of the investigations for another six months — until the end of January 2023.
According to the appellants, “no diligence has been carried out that would justify the extension now agreed, nor the previous ones.”
Moreno justified the extension in which the examination of documentation and the practice of a series of procedures were pending. Now, the Criminal Chamber corrects the judge and points out that those proceedings that had not been completed “are the same” as in the previous extension of the investigations, decreed in January of this year.
In the order, the magistrates of the Fourth Criminal Section explain that the resolutions appealed by those autonomous television stations, which are among the 14 investigated, “do not expose” the specific procedures that “it is necessary to carry out and their relevance for the investigation in the terms required” by law.
Thus, they say that the instructor who “is limited to mentioning a hypothetical procedure whose practice may or may not be necessary, according to the analysis of the documentation submitted, as well as others apparently already interested in previously, which cannot serve to fill the legal requirements that said precept imposes, thus making possible an investigation ‘sine die’ that began more than six years ago”.
