The former criminal chief of the State Attorney's Office debuts in the private sector as a defender of Iberdrola

The person who was responsible for the criminal area of the General State Attorney's Office until just a month ago, Rosa María Seoane, has made her debut in the private sector as a defender of Iberdrola Generación. Starting this Tuesday, the National Court is prosecuting the electricity company for the alleged intentional closure of reservoirs to artificially inflate the price of electricity in 2013 and, although Seoane did not speak in this first session, she could be seen sitting on the bench of the defenses.

As El Confidencial revealed last August, Seoane has just signed for the office of José Ángel González Franco, whose clients already included Iberdrola Generación. Now he will carry out his defense with another colleague to overthrow the accusation of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which asks that the company be sentenced to pay a fine of 84.9 million for a crime against consumers and the market..

“Iberdrola, with the aim of causing an increase in the price of electrical energy and harming consumers, devised and put into operation a system to increase the price of the energy it sold, beyond that which should result from the free competition of supply and demand,” says Anticorruption. The prosecutor also directs his accusation against four managers for whom he requests two years in prison: “He caused damage to the demand of at least 107,340,000 euros”.

This Tuesday, in the first session of the trial, two of the accused testified and denied the alleged manipulation. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the other two directors and the company's own representative are scheduled to testify.. After them, it will be the turn of experts and witnesses, among whom the former Minister of Industry, Energy and Tourism José Manuel Soria stands out..

From the sedition to Iberdrola

Until last September, Seoane was the person most responsible for the criminal proceedings in which the State was involved, among which the trial of the process stands out.. During the oral hearing in which the Supreme Court ended up condemning Oriol Junqueras and the rest of the Catalan politicians linked to the 1-O referendum, he defended the commission of a crime of sedition, the same one that ended up being attributed to them..

She specializes in tax crimes and, before taking the reins of the criminal area of the Legal Profession, she was deputy director general of Consultative and Litigation Affairs of the Legal Service of the Tax Agency. She also served as chief state lawyer in the Autonomous Community of Madrid and as deputy before the National Court.

In one of his last actions on behalf of the Legal Profession before the summer, he spoke about the adaptation of the Government's penal reform that eliminated sedition. After the Government reform came into force, the instructor of the procés case, magistrate Pablo Llarena, changed the prosecution of Carles Puigdemont and, instead of sedition and embezzlement, began to attribute to him the crimes of disobedience and the new aggravated embezzlement that introduces the legislative change.

The Law Office did not agree with his analysis and presented an appeal six days later. In it, the State's legal services agreed with Llarena in the aforementioned combination of aggravated embezzlement and disobedience, but they went one step further and asked to also add the new crime of aggravated public disorder.. In the case of Junqueras and the other convicts, the position was, however, different.. The Lawyers claimed that the aforementioned crime of public disorder should be applied, but, instead of the aggravated embezzlement that Puigdemont now faces, they pointed to the new type of embezzlement, which contemplates lower penalties..