National Police Station Castellón.ÀNGEL SÁNCHEZ
The First Department of the Provincial Court of Castellón has sentenced a former head of the Documentation Processing Unit for Foreign Citizens, subordinate to the Provincial Police Station of the National Police, to six months in prison and a year of suspension from employment and public offices for collecting money. or received gifts – from oranges to liqueurs to a month of full board in Marina d’Or – in exchange for arranging appointments or expediting procedures for 12 users, including Chinese, Algerian, Romanian or Moroccan citizens, who were also convicted to six months in prison.
The court considers that the 13 defendants are accused of a crime of bribery, according to the verdict published on Tuesday by the Valencian Supreme Court.
The officer and head of the Immigration Service office in Plaza Teodoro Izquierdo in Castellón, 60 years old at the time of the events, was arrested in March 2021. His duties included supervising the processing of documents issued to foreign citizens, as well as “opening the appointment system at random” of the aforementioned office, and this worked “by setting up two lines for the attention of citizens of foreigners.”
One of them was automatically configured according to the requests received via the appointment web portal. The second measure was carried out by the agents themselves “with citizens who came to the office to wait in line without making an appointment.” “In this way – as the verdict states as a proven fact – no foreign citizen who was not registered in one of the two aforementioned lists could be cared for in the aforementioned office.”
According to the court order, between 2020 and 2021, he used his “employment status” to his advantage to “receive gifts and money” to give foreigners access to process documents and “thus obtain compensation.” his services in response to the position he held.”
During this time, he received perfume, bags of oranges and artichokes that the defendant himself put in his car, cakes, bottles of Chinese liquor, a box of wine, bottles of disinfectant, a freezer or a month’s full board with everything included in the tourist complex Marina d’Or in Oropesa, among others. Gifts that some of the defendants gave to the officer even in the office itself, at his family’s house or at gas stations or supermarkets near his place of work.
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In return, it issued NIEs (Foreign Identity Number) and processed long-term residence cards, informed about new appointments on the web portal or informed about the status of the procedures requested by the other defendants. All this without the latter having to respect queues or branches.
The case dealt with as part of the jury trial involved a joint indictment in which the defendant and the public prosecutor requested that a corresponding judgment be issued. The trial was scheduled to take place on September 29th. The defendants admitted the facts and ratified the previous agreement, so that the presiding judge announced the verdict without convening a people’s jury.
The judgment is final as it was made by agreement of the parties and therefore cannot be appealed.
From the official Social Graduate School of Castellón, one of the legal operators who, together with the administrative managers and lawyers, does most of the work of processing immigration files, confirmed the problem in obtaining an appointment in the premises of Plaza de Teodoro Izquierdo. The delays in scheduling appointments for these dependencies were more than three months.