A judge charges the president of Cox for "revealing secrets" in the Abengoa bankruptcy

The Court of Instruction number 15 of Madrid has admitted for processing a complaint by the construction company Urbas against the president of the renewable energy company Cox Energy, Enrique Riquelme Vives, for an alleged crime of “discovering business secrets”. The facts denounced are related to the auction of the productive units of the former Abengoa.

The complaint was admitted for processing on July 4, although the order, to which El Confidencial has had access, had not been disclosed until now.. The instructor of the case, Judge Esperanza Collazos, has transferred the proceedings to the Prosecutor's Office so that it can rule on the adoption of possible precautionary measures against Riquelme and his company, which is also listed as being investigated..

According to Urbas, in mid-2022, a partner of the consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) proposed to Urbas to explore a contact with Cox Energy to “assess possible collaborations, integration of assets or even an acquisition of said company.”. Within the framework of this operation, the complaint relates, Cox Energy requested different confidential accounting information about Urbas through the PwC partner..

Before sharing his data, Urbas demanded the signing of a confidentiality agreement to put in writing that his “business secrets” could not be used for any purpose other than possible cooperation or integration with Cox Energy.. Riquelme's company accepted this condition and signed the confidentiality agreement on November 28, 2022. In the following days, Urbas began to share his information.

In a first phase, according to the complaint, the bulk of these data affected the ordinary accounting of Urbas. But on November 30, another PwC partner informed the construction company that Riquelme wanted to know the details of the offer that he was going to present to try to award the assets and liabilities of the extinct Abengoa, a process that was settled in the third section of the Mercantile Instance Court of Seville.

Cox argued that the numbers of the Urbas offer were important because the production units of the Andalusian multinational could affect the merger process in which they were immersed.. At first, the construction company refused to provide those details, but, on December 15, 2022, Riquelme himself wrote by WhatsApp to one of Urbas's advisers, Pablo Cobo, to expressly request the “confidential information used to prepare the offer presented.

“I think I can help you”

The complaint admitted for processing incorporates the messages sent by Riquelme. In these communications, the founder of Cox assures Cobo that he wants to access the data of the Urbas offer to give him a hand in the contest. “I think I can help you,” said Riquelme. Faced with such insistence, the Urbas counselor finally agreed to provide that information to his interlocutor in “good faith”..

The files that Cobo sent to Riquelme included “the conditions of the loans with the banking entities that would finance the operation, the liabilities assumed by Urbas, the structure of all liabilities, specific positions of guarantees, a specific five-year business plan for Abengoa and hypotheses considered by Urbas for its materialization”. “It was the result of months of efforts by Urbas and his advisers” and it was “very valuable confidential information (…) that determines the limits of the possibility of improving the offer,” the complaint underlines..

The construction company affirms that, after providing it with this information, Riquelme not only did not help it to finish outlining its offer, but that, “in contemplation and abuse of the confidential information provided by Urbas”, Cox Energy prepared its own candidacy in record time and presented it to the contest of the Third Section of the Mercantile Court of Seville.

Last April, the court ended up opting precisely for the proposal of Riquelme's company, to the detriment of those presented by Urbas and other companies and investment funds.. The losers appealed the decision, but Cox's choice was upheld in May.. Urbas again objected, presenting an annulment motion, but the head of the Mercantile Court 3 of Seville, Jesús Gabaldón, issued an order on July 12 that knocks down this last movement and closes the sale of the old Abengoa to the Riquelme company..

The admission for processing of the complaint for “discovery of business secrets” in Court number 15 of Madrid now opens another against Cox, although in the criminal sphere. It is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison..