Judge's confusion over Galán's indictment

The case of the indictment or dismissal of Ignacio Galán, chairman of Iberdrola, in the Villarejo case has suffered a peculiar period of confusion when Judge Manuel García-Castellón, head of the Central Court of Instruction number 6 of the Audiencia Nacional, issued a first order dismissing the indictment, expressing a whole series of reasons, and shortly afterwards issued another order correcting the previous one and maintaining the indictment.

However, Judge García Castellón stated in his first order that "in view of the proceedings carried out, (...) maintaining Galán's indictment would be contrary to the principle of guilt (there is no proof of malice or guilt) and the presumption of innocence" because "there is no evidence (...) neither of the position of control of the act nor of specific functions of supervision and control of the investigated facts, nor of knowledge of them".  The surprise came this Friday when the magistrate corrected his decision and kept Galán charged, but exonerated three other Iberdrola executives in the same case: Francisco Martínez Córcoles, Fernando Bécker and Rafael Orbegozo. In the corrected version of the court order, García-Castellón acknowledges that "there is no document, written, audio or image, that directly proves that [former police commissioner José Manuel] Villarejo was hired on Galán's orders or that unequivocally shows that he knew he was an active commissioner when he was hired".

Galán has always denied that he carried out orders to Villarejo, the subject of the judge's investigation. Faced with the possible contradictions arising from these orders at the Audiencia Nacional, the electricity company's entourage considers that, in any case, Galán's situation has improved significantly, because either he is dismissed from the proceedings by the rectified order or he will be dismissed for the reasons explained by the same magistrate Manuel García-Castellón: "The provisional dismissal is appropriate ex art. 641.2 of the Lecrim, in relation to this person under investigation, on understanding the existence of a previous crime, but there are not sufficient grounds to charge this person under investigation as a perpetrator, accomplice or accessory". But they are aware that what is important is the last order.

In the first order in which Galán was cleared of charges, the judge stated that "the existence of objective criminal liability cannot be sustained for a specific manager without there being concrete evidence of his participation in the act, simply because of the position he held, as this would open the door to being able to charge this person for any criminal act that may have been committed in an area under his direction". 

In addition, he pointed out that "effectively, having heard the explanations offered by the person under investigation and by Mr. Asenjo [Antonio Asenjo, former head of security at Iberdrola], which are in the proceedings, we can conclude that there is no evidence of José Ignacio Sánchez Galán's participation in the events under investigation".  García-Castellón's arguments concluded that "in the absence of even the slightest piece of information that would make it possible to attribute" to Galán "knowledge of an unlawful act, it is not possible to continue [against him] a criminal judicial investigation, (...) it is not possible "to attribute knowledge of an unlawful act, (...) it is not possible to attribute knowledge of an unlawful act" to Galán. ) it is not possible "to attribute an alleged criminal activity simply because he is a representative of a body or entity, without first examining whether there is evidence of his specific participation and the existence of guilt derived from a breach of the failure to adopt obligatory measures to mitigate the risk", therefore "concluding that there is no evidence of José Ignacio Sánchez Galán's participation in the events under investigation".