Success in criminal law, can mean free absolution after the trial, obtaining provisional liberty with or without bail before trial, dismissal of the case during the investigation process, the best negotiations with the Public Prosecutor, obtaining annulments of the procedure etc.
We present below a list of our latest success stories and relevant interventions:
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas obtained the refusal of the extradition to Chile of an Italian businessman and industrial machinery trader for the offences of property uprising and embezzlement. The Criminal Chamber upheld the arguments of the defence, represented by one of the firm’s lawyers. Firstly, there was no double criminality, since the facts were not a crime in Spain but a mere civil breach of contract.
Secondly, the exception of res judicata was invoked, since our client was investigated for the same facts, and the Italian judge also considered that there was no criminal offence whatsoever and, on the contrary, it was a simple commercial dispute. Both reasons determined that the surrender of our client to Chile was rejected.
Our client, a Russian real estate businessman, was arrested on the basis of an extradition request from the Principality of Andorra. The Central Court of Instruction ordered his provisional detention as a result of the extradition proceedings for the crimes of aggravated fraud and misappropriation, disloyal administration, document forgery, asset forgery and money laundering. The maximum penalty applicable to the crimes for which he was wanted was 21 years of imprisonment and it all stemmed from a lawsuit with three “dissatisfied” clients.
At first, Chabaneix Abogados obtained provisional release and, after the hearing, the refusal of extradition. The Public Prosecutor’s Office, at first against our claims, concluded, as we had been arguing, that there was indeed res judicata, since our client was already investigated and his case was filed in the Courts of Catalonia and the Valencian Community. The plaintiffs, not satisfied with this decision, were reproducing their claims in the Battlia d’Andorra, an example of forum shopping.
Likewise, as defense lawyers, we argued that the principle of double criminality did not apply (the facts were not a crime in Spain but a commercial dispute), Andorra had not provided the statute of limitations and, according to the circumstances of the case (forum shopping) and a reservation of the Principality to the European Convention on Extradition, its authorities had to provide sufficient evidence of a crime.
Chabaneix Abogados obtains the refusal of the extradition of Khaled Nezzar by the Third Section of the Criminal Court of the Audiencia Nacional.
Khaled Nezzar, now 83 years old, was an important military and political figure in recent decades in Algeria, having held the highest positions of government in the country from the Chief of Staff, the Ministry of Defence and the High Committee of State, the country’s collegiate governing body.
He is known to have been a strong opponent of the Islamist political movements fighting for power in Algeria.
After his retirement from military and political activity, he and his son became a successful telecommunications entrepreneur through the company Smart Link, which became a leader in satellite communications and Internet.
Even so, General Nezzar never stopped intervening in the political affairs of his country, being very critical of the authoritarian drifts of the country’s politicians and military.
Following his stances, he suffered a series of reprisals, including a groundless conviction for conspiracy against the state, the arbitrary closure of his businesses, the issuing of international warrants against him, members of his family and legal advisors, and the censorship of his son’s online newspaper, “Algérie Patriotique”.
At the hearing which took place on 4 December, Luis Chabaneix, Khaled Nezzar’s lawyer, denounced several breaches of the extradition regulations contained in the Passive Extradition Law and in the Extradition Treaty between the Kingdom of Spain and the Republic of Algeria, as well as the existence of a clearly political motivation for the extradition.
The Audiencia Nacional refused the extradition of Khaled Nezzar on the grounds of violation of Article 2 of the Passive Extradition Law relating to the principle of double criminality. The Passive Extradition Law, through this article, requires that the offences for which the extradited person is requested be offences in both countries, the requesting country (Algeria) and the requested country (Spain).
The crimes that formed part of the extradition documents sent by Algeria are not crimes in Spain, and the Audiencia Nacional had to refuse the extradition.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas obtains the dismissal and filing of one of the persons investigated in this case before the Audiencia Nacional.
Our client, a councillor of a town council of a municipality in the Community of Madrid, had the role of defendant in the separate part number 7, called “Waiter Music”. In this case, the payment of commissions to various town councils in exchange for preferential contracts for the organisation of different types of events, from rallies to concerts and inaugurations, among others, was being investigated.
After a thorough and forceful statement made by the client, our firm presented a technical and rigorous request for dismissal and archiving in which the absence of evidence of the commission of the crime was attacked, finally managing to convince the Central Court of Instruction.
Olga K. is a Russian refugee living in France who in 2012 became involved in Gulag.net, a Russian website that publishes allegations of torture and abuse suffered by inmates in the Russian prison system.
Last year Olga, now 37, decided to travel to Spain with her son for a family holiday. What she did not know was that on her arrival in our country she would be arrested. Russia was suing her for drug trafficking.
Luis Chabaneix, as the lawyer responsible for her defence, managed to get Interpol to assert her refugee status in France, which together with her statement, summarising how she was forced to plead guilty to trafficking in Russia, was enough for the Audiencia Nacional to close the case.
The Criminal Chamber of the National Court has denied the request for extradition of an Ecuadorian man to his country of origin based on the arguments used by CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS.
On the one hand, the lack of reciprocity was alleged since there was an express prohibition contained in the Ecuadorian Constitution, by which the Republic of Ecuador would be obliged to deny the extradition of a national of said country who had requested ours. On the other hand, it was demonstrated that the claimed person effectively held Spanish nationality.
Our client, grandson and son of dissidents of the Castro regime, was arrested pursuant to an extradition request from the Republic of Cuba. He was requested to be tried for allegedly leading an international organization, by virtue of which he facilitated people’s departure from Cuba, taking them illegally to Mexico and the United States. The maximum penalty applicable to the crimes for which he was claimed was life imprisonment.
For this defense, various arguments were put forward to oppose his surrender, focusing on his Spanish nationality as the one actually used, and the non-existence of the principle of reciprocity on the part of Cuba with regard to the surrender of Cuban nationals.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office was at all times contrary to our claims, but in the end the National Court decided to uphold the position of this defense, denying the surrender of our client to Cuba.
CHABANEIX ABOGADOS PENALISTAS is appearing in the Morodo case, operation Nafta, to defend one of the persons under investigation in the proceedings before the Audiencia Nacional.
The case is being investigated by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the National High Court, under the jurisdiction of Judge Santiago Pedraz, an alleged money laundering scheme, international corruption among private individuals and tax fraud from the state company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A.
The operation has led to several arrests, including that of a son of Raúl Morodo, who was the Spanish ambassador to Caracas in the first government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
Several partners are being investigated for alleged corruption in international transactions for allegedly providing consultancy services to high-ranking Venezuelan officials, as well as for alleged money laundering.
Chabaneix Abogados is appearing in the “Publiolimpia Case”, the case of the so-called Catalan Madoff.
A.M., a well-known businessman in Catalonia, set up Publiolimpia S.L. as an alleged vehicle for investing in the purchase of advertising space on national television channels such as the Atresmedia Group and Mediaset. In the eyes of investors, he claimed to offer these advertising spaces to large clients such as Repsol, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Huawei, etc.
However, the administrator of Publiolimpia did not have any agreements with advertisers or channels. He asked individuals and companies for funding to finance these activities, arguing that there was a time lag between the contracting of the spaces and the payment of the clients.
More than 1,200 investors bet on this business because of the high returns it offered. The principal investigated was paying the beneficiaries with the inflow of money from new investors. The business was sustainable as long as the capital inflows were maintained. The pyramid ponzi scheme would have generated around 300 million euros. When it was not sustainable, an investor group filed a lawsuit in the Juzgado de Instrucción nº 31 of Barcelona. Antonio Más went to the police station and admitted the facts. From there began an investigation that is currently in the hands of the Central Court of Instruction No. 6 of the National High Court.
Chabaneix Abogados acts as both defence and private prosecutor in this case and represents one of the main investor groups in the company.
CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS will be in charge of holding the private accusation on behalf of Mr. GABRIEL NGUEMA LIMA, current Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons of Equatorial Guinea, son of the President of the Guinean Republic Mr. TEODORO OBIANG NGUEMA.
Our client is the main victim of the mediatic cause, followed by the so-called “King Report” allegedly prepared by the former police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, who on behalf of persons opposed to the succession in favor of our client, and change of very large sums of money, carried out monitoring, illegal investigations, and planting false news in order to discredit our client
Our client, a renowned physician with several clinics in the Andean country, had received grants from the public administration to upgrade his medical equipment.
In his case, he has used the funds to recruit staff, which was necessary for the operation of the equipment.
Our client was released at the first hearing and after a careful study of the extradition file, the proceedings were closed.
Our client was arrested on the basis of an extradition request to Algeria in which he was accused of being part of a corruption plot in the construction of the East-West Highway, the biggest political-financial scandal of the last decade in Algeria.
The arrest warrant issued for his prosecution did not specify at what time or what exactly our client’s conduct had taken place. Moreover, when Algeria sent the extra-judicial documents, not only did they continue to fail to specify these fundamental elements, but a sentence was handed down which, without explaining the facts, had sentenced our client in absentia to twenty years in prison.
As a defense, we highlighted the obvious lack of determination of the criminal conduct of which our client was accused, that is to say, that the principle of double jeopardy contained in Article 2 of the Passive Extradition Law was not fulfilled.
Despite the persistent insistence of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Audiencia Nacional granted our request to reject the request for extradition to Algeria, precisely because of the formal errors we highlighted.
Chabaneix Abogados is involved in Operation Helium. At the request of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office of the Audiencia Nacional, an investigation was opened for corruption of public officials in international commercial transactions and money laundering for the awarding of public contracts for the construction, financing, operation and maintenance of the Gar solar hybrid power plant in Hassi R’mel in Algeria.
This corruption scheme allegedly involved a major Spanish company in the renewable energy sector as well as numerous intermediaries and a vast network of international companies, some of which are based in Switzerland and Panama.
Our client, resident in Switzerland, is being investigated for allegedly being one of these intermediaries and for allegedly having used his contacts in high Algerian ministerial spheres to obtain public tenders.
A procedure was initiated in the Audiencia Nacional to extradite to Venezuela a young opponent of Mr. Nicolás Maduro. In 2016, in the course of a revolt in which our client was participating, the death of a captain of the Bolivarian National Guard took place; for this reason, an investigation was opened for homicide against several opponents, including our client.
Our client fled to the United States where he was detained, and his deportation to Spain was decreed, due to his dual Spanish-Venezuelan nationality. His family contacted our Office in order to obtain his release as soon as he arrived in Spain; and we did so, obtaining his release after the first hearing before the Audiencia Nacional.
In the course of the procedure in the Audiencia, in view of the fact that Venezuela did not respect the deadline established in the bilateral Treaty to provide the extraditional documentation, we presented a request for the procedure to be filed. In spite of the opposition of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the National High Court granted our request, all cauteral measures imposed were lifted and the extradition procedure has finally been filed.
In this case, CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS have defended Mr. Koutché from the extradition request made by the authorities of the Republic of Benin for the crimes of embezzlement of public funds, influence peddling and money laundering, among others.
Initially CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS granted Mr Koutché provisional release and, following a hearing at the Audiencia Nacional, extradition was refused on the following grounds:
The facts reported did not constitute a crime in Spain, so the principle of double incrimination is not complied with.
The order issued by the Benin authorities was fraudulent because it was issued when Komi Koutché was unable to attend the summons.
The court set up to try the case is an exceptional political court appointed by the executive branch to prosecute opponents.
There are documented cases of reprisals against opponents of the Regime and the extradition was intended to politically annul the main leader of the opposition, Komi Koutché.
Luis Chabaneix and his team of CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERSdemonstrated in an absolutely convincing manner all these points, which were included in the judicial resolution denying extradition.
xThis is a macro case investigating an alleged fraud carried out through a network of dental clinics throughout Spain. In addition, other crimes such as unfair administration and money laundering are also being investigated. Allegedly, in the iDental clinics, low cost treatments were carried out that caused dental problems to some patients, or the treatments were not completed despite the fact that they were paid for through the financing systems offered by the company.
Ten people were arrested in connection with these incidents, but our clients were released the following morning. The investigation is expected to be slow and complex, as there are still numerous courts dealing with individual claims, which will have to defer to the National Court in order to deal with the case as a whole.
CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS, has been appointed in CASE VITALDENT, to exercise the defense of one of the Group’s leaders. The case began to be investigated by a Court of Majadahonda (Madrid) and then by the Audiencia Nacional (the federal court of Spain).
The supposed fraud of the dental clinics, consisted of a group of people, among them the then owner of Vitaldent, designed “a complex fraudulent system towards the franchisors, clients and patients and the own Treasury”, so that its dome received each Year 17.2 million euros in black money, only from the 146 clinics that the chain had.
The crimes are against the public treasury due to the amount of fraud and the use of interposed persons; the forgery of the accounts, money laundering, all committed within a criminal organization.
Finally, we have obtain the dismissall of the case for our client.
CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS, has recently appeared in the famous case against the Russian mafia known as “OPERATION TROIKA”, with great media relevance because it was considered the fourth largest crime organization in the world (Tambovskaya). The instruction in this case was carried out by Judge Baltasar Garzón, one of his most relevant cases.
The oral trial of this powerful international criminal plot lasted five weeks in the Audiencia Nacional (Federal Court). The Prosecutor’s Office accused almost 30 people of of conspiracy of crime and money laundering. Specifically, our client was accused of having been an advisor to one of the four ringleaders of the Russian mafia in Spain for money laundering.
This case is having an absolute influence on the political, judicial and economic world of Russia. The prison term petition against our client was 7 years in prison and a fine of 15 million euros. Finally, we have obtained a penalty of one year and seven months, which, being less than two years, means that our client did not enter the prison. The penalty of a fine of 15 million was reduced to 26,000 euros.
CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS, has been appointed in the “HOSPITAL GENERAL DE VALENCIA” case. It is a very extensive operation of diversion of public funds to multiple companies related to the health sector in the province of Valencia.
Agents of the UDEF registered the headquarters of the Ministry of Health and the General Hospital of Valencia for seven hours, as well as the headquarters of several companies supplying this department and that hospital. In the same operation has been arrested, among others, the nephew of imprisoned exconseller Rafael Blasco, Sergio Blasco. We will continue informing.
It is one of the biggest cases of pyramidal fraud (Ponzi fraud) that occurred in Spain. Set up by a former AFINSA worker, who was inspired by the fraudulent system used by the latter and the Philatelic Forum, but applying it instead of stamps, to works of art. Art and Nature cheated for almost ten years, a total of 434 million euros, to 19,360 injured.
Our client was an independent auditor, who issued an audit report on the company in a single exercise. However, he was unjustly accused of numerous crimes, such as the continued crime of aggravated fraud, punishable insolvency crime, continued crime of accounting forgery, and crimes against consumers. This led to the fact that we had to face 12 plaintiffs (private accusations), some of whom were seeking the punishment of up to 23 years in prison.
After the trial, our client was sentenced by the Audiencia Nacional to four years in prison. Not satisfied with this result, we take the case to the Supreme Court, who has just failed to partially uphold our appeal, absolving him of all crimes except for the forgery of the accountings, for which he has been condemned as a cooperator to the penalty of a year of prison. This penalty may be suspended, which means that after eleven years of struggle, our client can avoid entry into prison.
A procedure was initiated in the National High Court, to extradite to China an important businessman from the shipping and natural sector of Hong Kong. He was accused of committing an alleged crime of fraud and multi-million dollar contract fraud against a Chinese state company.
When representing us for his defense, we find that the Public Prosecutor’s Office, in his report, requested that extradition be carried out when there is no element that could prevent it. However, after studying the file in detail, we conclude that the facts for which our client was claimed had prescribed. And in addition, concurred another series of errors in the procedure as for example that the facts related in the red alert of the Interpol (international order of detention) differed completely with those exposed in the file that China sent to the Spanish courts for the resolution of the extradition.
Despite initially having the Public Prosecutor against us, at the hearing before the Chamber, he acknowledged the existence of the impeding causes for the delivery by us. Finally, we obtained the dismissal of the extradition.
CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS has been appointed in the Operation FÉNIX. This is the operation against Mario CONDE and its environment, following a complaint filed by the Anticorruption Prosecutor for crimes of money laundering, criminal association, punishable insolvency (frustration of the execution of sentences) and crimes against the Public Treasury.
The procedure is being processed by the Central Court of Instruction number 1 of the National Court. Our client is investigated, for having supposedly participated in the operation of the business structure of Mario Conde and its surroundings, which supposedly served to avoid the payment of the civil liability imposed in the Banesto case more than 20 years ago, to avoid the payment of taxes and money laundering abroad (Luxembourg, Switzerland, Dubai etc.).
International drug trafficking. In this procedure, more than ten people were arrested and accused of trafficking in various narcotic substances and of processing and handling them. The trial took place in the month of February 2018.
After five years of instruction, we obtained the suspension of sentence for two of our defendants who were required a sentence of 8 and a half years in prison. They will not enter prison.
CHABANEIX ABOGADOS PENALISTAS, is acting for the main defendant in Operation Cardón, one of the largest cases of money laundering related to international arms trafficking.
It is a macroinvestigation that has been processed for six years in the Audiencia Nacional, against the so-called “Chinese Mafia” presumably led by the well-known businessman Gao Ping.
Our client is reproached for being involved in the aforementioned organization, specifically purportedly carrying out money laundering operations by taking money from Spain to other States of the European Union through his company. As a result he was put in search and international capture, being detained abroad and brought prisoner to Spain.
His family requested our help and we immediately obtained his release. Currently the processing of the extensive investigation continues.
Our representative was denounced by the rest of the partners of a company of which he was equally a participant, dedicated to the sale, management and distribution of waste.
They reproached him for having received in his name and for his own benefit amounts that were returned by the Tax Agency in favor of the company and that exceeded one million euros. Subsequently, the accusation against the children of our represented party was broadened, due to the alleged commission of a crime of raising property. In CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS, we have defend three accused persons.
Finally, after several months of struggle and negotiation with the opposing party, the procedure was dismissed and filed for our defendants, thus preventing them from appearing in court.
LUIS CHABANEIX, is defending the Russian hacker, considered the most important cyberlaw of the world. Our client allegedly led the technical side of an international organization, dedicated to robbing ATMs and banks around the world.
Through hackin and computer manipulation of banking computer systems with malware such as Carnabak or Cobalt, our client supposedly got cashiers from all over the world to expel the money they had available, collecting it at the time other members of the organization, and converting it into cryptocurrencies to hide the huge amounts of money thus obtained.
In this case is involved not only the Spanish Police but also the FBI and police departments from Russia, Thaïland and many more countries.
More than 60 people were detained in the well-known Cobo Calleja business area of Madrid, for allegedly integrating a Chinese criminal organization dedicated to money laundering, tax fraud and contraband.
Supposedly, the members of the organization to launder the money, gave it to groups of Chinese tourists ordering them to acquire luxury products such as handbags or jewelry, and also took advantage of the fact that tourists, not being residents of the European Union, were entitled to to the refund of VAT. We have obtained that our clients are in provisional liberty while it continues the processing of the cause.
Provincial Court of Almería. Embezzlement of public funds, fraud against public administration. We have passed the eighteen sessions of trial of the so-called “invoices case” of the Tourist Board of the Provincial Council. Members of the Almeria Provincial Council are accused of supposedly having devised a plan for which they would have appropriated more than 600,000.- € of public funds from the institution for their own benefit, after agreeing with various employers to prepare false invoices.
Fraud and massive Scam, criminal group. CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS are appointed to hold the defense of an employee of ArcelorMittal in Zaragoza, accused of continued aggravated fraud and belonging to a criminal group. This is an investigation against workers of the multinational ArcelorMittal, for a supposed fraud of several million euros.
More than seven years of prison were required against our client and finally, after the first court he only had been sentenced to two years of prison which means that he don’t have to go to jail. By the way, we continue to defend his complete innocence, so now we applied an appeal to the Supreme Court.
In this case, our client is a young man from Madrid who was arrested in a police operation carried out in the city of Leganés. In this operation, a catch of drugs (hashish, cocaine, marijuana and pills) was seized along with supplies destined for the sale of the same and money in a fractioned ticket, in the house where our client was illegally residing.
A priori, the crimes of drug trafficking and usurpation of real property were committed and a prison sentence for our client seemed inevitable. But not satisfied with this, we decided to focus the line of defense on a thorough analysis of the procedure, by virtue of which, formal defects were found that entailed the injury of the fundamental rights of our client.
Specifically, we detected two procedural errors: on the one hand, the entry and registration in the dwelling took place without concurring any of the legal cases that may be based, and on the other hand, the chain of custody of the drug was broken by more than twelve hours. For all these reasons, based on our request for dismissal, the case file was obtained.
This has been one of the last most relevant crime cases in Alicante. Two young French men were accused of having beaten a prostitute. The Prosecutor’s Office requested a 15-year prison sentence for both of them. In the present case, our defendant faced this penalty for homicide before a popular jury, despite not having participated in a crime committed by the other accused.
In the trial it was shown that our defendant had gone after the place where the murder had occurred and where the body was located. His only participation was to remove the body and clean up the crime scene. For this reason, he was not sentenced for homicide but for concealment and could be released.
International drug trafficking. 3,500 KG of cocaine. The SPES NOSTRA operation was one of the largest seizures of cocaine by sea. More than 3,500 kilos of the substance mentioned in Denia were confiscated. In the year 2010, our office appeared in this procedure to exercise the defense of one of the crew of French origin who was aboard the ship bound for Venezuela. After the oral trial, our client was acquitted.
On this vessel was another French citizen, who can not be tried for being paid a prison sentence in France for 17 years for assaults on armored cars. Even so, he was still imputed and awaiting trial. The first problem in this case, is that being imprisoned in France, the Spanish procedure could not advance until our client did not comply with the entire sentence imposed in France, which was unacceptable.
We put in place European judicial cooperation mechanisms so that, despite the detention in France, the procedure could be unblocked in Spain. Once this first step was achieved, we presented a petition for dismissal, which was accepted. It meant the freedom of our defendant and the file of the procedure in Spain without having to go to trial and obtain his free acquittal.
El primer problema en este asunto, es que al estar preso en Francia, el procedimiento español no podía avanzar hasta que nuestro cliente no cumpliera la totalidad de la pena impuesta en Francia, lo cual era inaceptable.
Pusimos en marcha mecanismos de cooperación judicial europea para que pese a la detención en Francia se pudiera desbloquear el procedimiento en España.
Conseguido este primer paso, presentamos una petición de sobreseimiento, que fue aceptada. Supuso la libertad de nuestro defendido y el archivo del procedimiento en España sin tener que ir hasta juicio y obtener su libre absolución.
In this proceeding, we defended three defendants investigated for their participation in a network dedicated to the international traffic of narcotics. The operation culminated in the seizure of more than 1,500 kilos of cocaine. At the beginning of the procedure we obtained the file and dismissal of one of the accused.
A posteriori and after the oral trial in which the Public Prosecutor requested a sentence of 13 and a half years, we obtained a sentence of deportation from Spanish territory.
The result of an investigation initiated in 1999 into three organisations led by international criminals: John Palmer, Mohamed Derbah and Dennis New.
The investigation, which was conducted under the judicial direction of Judge Baltasar Garzón, has been completed after almost 20 years, with the trial taking place in January and February 2019. For the most part, the scheme has been developed in Spain, especially in the Canary Islands, although the criminal organisation has acted at international level.
Our defendants have been charged with membership of the aforementioned criminal group led by the late John Palmer, as well as with timeshare fraud and money laundering.
They are accused, firstly, of deceiving foreign clients by convincing them to sign contracts whereby, for a certain price, they purchase holiday packages consisting of the enjoyment of flats located in various parts of the world. Since each person is allocated a certain period of time for such enjoyment, they are allowed to exchange dates.
Furthermore, our defendants’ company ensured the reimbursement of the money invested in the event of termination of the contract. There are several complaints from dissatisfied customers for alleged lack of reimbursement, impossibility to take advantage of the flats, or other circumstances.
Finally, they are accused of providing part of the money obtained in the alleged scams to the criminal organisation in question.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas succeeded in avoiding the extradition of a businesswoman in the mining sector to Bolivia on a charge of fraud due to the non-delivery of a shipment of goods.
With a favourable report from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the First Section of the Criminal Court rejected the request for delivery as it did not consider double criminality: the factual background of the case did not constitute a crime but a decriminalised breach of contract, a corporate conflict. To prove this, the defence relied on the fact that the parties maintained a fruitful business relationship without any problems for many years. Likewise, formal reasons such as the illegitimacy of the arrest warrant, or the lack of extraditional reciprocity, were alleged and addressed at the extradition hearing.
Chinese Mafia Fraud against customs and tax. Criminal organization. This is a broad police operation against fraud in operations of massive imports of containers from China.
The procedure, especially complex, pursues crimes of money laundering, criminal group, crime against Customs and the European Treasury, falsehoods in mercantile documents, etc. At present, after the arrests made, our client is on provisional release.
Our client, a businessman from the cosmetics sector, was sued by Algeria to serve a five-year prison sentence that had been handed down in his absence. Italy had already denied his extradition to Algeria for that same request, but the client, upon entering Spain, was again arrested and faced with another procedure with similar characteristics, although the reasons why Italy refused his extradition were not applicable in the Spanish case.
After a thorough study of the new extraditional file, we argued that extradition should be denied due to the absence of the requirement of duality of the crime, since although he was already convicted in Algeria, in Spain his conduct would not have been an offense but a mere administrative offense . This argument was finally estimated by the Chamber, its delivery to Algeria being rejected.
Criminal Court of Madrid, acquittal. Four partners of a company dedicated to property development, were accused by the fifth partner, who accused them of having emptied the social patrimony for their own benefit. Due to the economic crisis, the estates owned by the company were not sold, so our clients decided to buy them themselves.
In CHABANEIX CRIMINAL LAWYERS, we have defende two of the partners. At the trial, the fourth partner was convicted and yet all of our clients were acquitted, since it was proved that they had not committed any crime.
Chabaneix Abogados has obtained that the Supreme Court overturns the prison sentence of our client who misappropriated his mother-in-law’s assets and acquits him.
Our client was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for misappropriation of more than 430,000 euros from his mother-in-law’s bank accounts.
The first instance sentence established that our defendant had taken advantage of the power given to him by his mother-in-law to manage her assets and had used it for his own benefit by gradually withdrawing money from her accounts.
However, the Supreme Court has annulled the sentence, arguing that these facts are covered by the so-called “acquittal excuse of article 268 of the Criminal Code”, which exempts from criminal liability in circumstances such as this one, given that there is a first-degree kinship by affinity (mother-in-law-son-in-law) and that both lived together. In this way, the Court upheld Chabaneix Abogados’ argument that their parental relationship had not been extinguished despite the death of the defendant’s wife.
Thanks to this argument used to appeal the conviction, our defendant was acquitted.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas, in collaboration with its associated law firm in Brazil, obtained the denial of the extradition of its client to this country.
Our client, a Brazilian national, was arrested by virtue of the international arrest warrant issued by the Federative Republic of Brazil for the crimes of qualified theft, money laundering and membership of a criminal organisation and the Central Court of Instruction ordered his provisional imprisonment.
The Brazilian federal judge revoked the arrest and detention order and ordered the defendant’s release after he filed a habeas corpus petition.
Luis Chabaneix alleged the illegality of the arrest warrant issued by the Brazilian authorities (revoked by their judicial bodies due to the violation of human rights), achieving the objective not only of the immediate release of his client in Spain but also the definitive closure of the extradition proceeding.
Luis Chabaneix succeeded in denying the extradition to China of his client, a well-known Chinese businessman based in Singapore.
According to the Chinese authorities, for whom gambling is a criminal activity, the fact that our client was the manager of an important international online gambling website was sufficient reason to prosecute him, with a prison sentence of up to ten years.
Fortunately, the Second Section of the Criminal Chamber of the Audiencia Nacional agreed with the arguments of the defence and rejected the extradition.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas brought up not only the lack of double criminality (gambling is not only legal in Spain as an economic-business activity but a lucrative business sector, and has a long historical tradition) but also the absence of judicial power in the arrest warrant (it was a police document endorsed by the People’s Prosecutor), or the absence of jurisdiction on the part of the Chinese authorities to prosecute a commercial activity that did not take place in their territory.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas succeeded in having the Criminal Chamber of the Audiencia Nacional denying the extradition of their client to Algeria, where he would face the imposition of a life sentence.
We argued that the crime for which the Algerian authorities were claiming him was time-barred and, after a change of criteria by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the final stage of the extradition hearing (finally accepting the reasoning of the defence), the Magistrates refused to accept the extradition.
Our Ghanaian client was a manager and director of a foreign exchange and goods forwarding company. The FBI accused him of defrauding and laundering more than $10 million and was seeking a sentence of up to 75 years in prison.
The work of the agents and the US Attorney’s Office was meticulous and detailed. When the US authorities provide all the evidence in the case, it is virtually impossible to achieve a complete denying of the extradition to the United States on such grounds.
However, after a tough judicial process, on appeal, the Plenary of the Audiencia Nacional partially accepted the arguments put forward by the defence regarding the failure to establish certain key events; which led to a reduction of the sentences to be imposed to less than 9 years.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas succeeded in preventing the extradition of a woman of Russian nationality to the Argentine Republic.
The citizen from the Russian Federation was wanted on the basis of an arrest warrant, which could be subject to question in light of the events in the requesting country. The combined efforts of the defense teams in the requesting country and in Spain led to the closing of the extradition case in our country.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas has prevented the extradition to Bolivia of a Spanish citizen accused of fraud in the sale of a property.
The firm argued that there was no crime but a civil dispute of a contractual nature between the parties. It also argued that Spanish nationality, in view of its defendant’s roots and the feasibility of prosecution in Spain, should trigger the Treaty’s optional extradition denying clause.
Finally, although the Public Prosecutor’s Office reaffirmed its opinion in favour of extradition regardless of the Spanish nationality of the defendant, the Section exercised the optional protection and rejected the extradition.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas succeeds in preventing a young Spaniard from being extradited to Ecuador. This country was demanding the firm’s client on the grounds of the alleged commission of serious crimes.
The constitutional prohibition of the Ecuadorian Republic regarding the extradition of its nationals allowed the firm to argue the absence of extraditional reprocity and that the Section of the Criminal Chamber of the Audiencia Nacional, with a favourable report from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, finally exercised protection over the defendant and denied his extradition.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas has succeeded in closing the extradition of an international businessman to the United States of Mexico.
After a difficult process in which the lawyers had to manage the communication of the main events that took place in the original proceedings and their effects in Spain, the firm managed to close the extradition case of its client.
Chabaneix Abogados Penalistas obtained on appeal that two foreign citizens resident in Spain were not extradited to Switzerland.
They argued that the crime was time-barred and that the order had to be judicial and not from the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Several prosecutors had spoken in favour of extradition and against these arguments.
The debate lay in how European law was interpreted.
The extradition of the clients of this law firm was initially agreed upon by the Section.
In the end, however, after a double appeal, in which all the technical reasons were set out in detail, the Plenary, composed of all the judges of the Audiencia Nacional, found that the lawyers were right and decided that the extradition to the Swiss authorities was not admissible.
CHABANEIX
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