The Supreme Court annuls Soler’s sentence for the attempted kidnapping of Soriano

The supreme court has annulled the sentence of the former president of Valencia Juan Soler for the conspiracy to kidnap the former president of the Mestalla club Vicente Soriano to try to collect a debt for the sale of some shares of the entity.

After having sold the majority of the club’s shares, Soler never got paid for those actions and although Soriano declared himself unable to face his debt (the fund to which he was going to sell them did not pay him either), the defendant suspected that he had money abroad, so a friend of restoration businessman devised the kidnapping of the hand of two other people. One of them turned out to be a police confidant and advised of her intentions, after which the agents gave her a device to record a meeting in which Soler gave the final go-ahead to the operation.

Chamber II of the Supreme Court has annulled the sentences imposed by the Provincial Court of Valencia four people for conspiracy to kidnap a businessman and rob his home with violence by considering illegal the evidence constituted by the recording, without judicial authorization, taken to each by one of the accused, who said he was a police confidant, in a meeting in which the crimes would have been planned.

The high court has highlighted that the illegality of the recording obtained by the police officers, Using one of the accused, it leads to the violation of the right not to confess guilty and, with it, the right to the presumption of innocence. For this reason, it considers the appeal of three of the accused and acquits them of the sentences imposed, which also extends to the fourth convicted person who did not appeal.

The Supreme Court indicates that there is no evidence disconnected from the clandestine recording, which was at the origin of the present case, for which the acquittal proceeds.

The sentence is based on the incontrovertible fact that the device used by the co-defendant to obtain the recording of the conversations that he was later going to make available to the Group of Robberies of the Higher Police Headquarters of Valencia, was delivered to him by the agents themselves, who wanted to obtain more substantiated evidence about what the other defendants they were planning. But he emphasizes that all this did without any knowledge and authorization by the judicial authority.

“Evidentiary illegality is associated with the advantage that investigators obtain when they circumvent the limits imposed by our constitutional system”, highlights the order following the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court and of the Supreme Court II itself,

“Unreservedly accept a statement obtained in these terms, it means opening an unprecedented and dangerous path that would allow the criminal investigation to avoid the disturbing limits imposed by the guarantees of our constitutional system ”, he adds.