SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The businessman Miguel Concepción has announced this Friday that he will present an appeal for protection before the Constitutional Court, understanding that the Supreme Court ruling, which ratifies that of the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and sentences him to 23 months in prison and payment of 3.9 million –in the company of his two daughters– for a crime of aggravated fraud, violates his fundamental rights.
In a statement, it affirms that the sentence is “contradictory” with the agreement that was reached with the Prosecutor’s Office and regrets that the extinct Islas Airways, “which fostered air competition in the Canary Islands, has been the only airline company against whose directors action has been taken to demand personal responsibility.
The businessman from La Palma reports that the accusation was based on the fact that Islas Airways offered special discounts to its travelers on
the official rate, which was subsidized, and the Ministry of Public Works claimed that the same discounts had to be made on the part referring to the subsidy.
This interpretation, he points out, “affected not only Islas Airways, but other important Spanish airlines that applied the
same policies on their tickets and that they had to pay, like us, the full amount of the deductions not made on the subsidized fare”.
On the other hand, he points out, “no person in charge of these companies,
To date, he has been prosecuted and convicted.”
Likewise, it indicates that from the first moment he paid the amounts
that the Ministry of Development claimed as defrauded and when the oral trial was opened, the entire economic amount that the Prosecutor’s Office considered defrauded had already been “repaired”.
Along these lines, he states that the appeal filed before the Supreme Court was based on the fact that the Court had handed down a “more serious” sentence of conviction than had been agreed with the
Prosecutor’s Office at the beginning of the trial, which included amounts from an extrapolation by sampling calculated by some experts from the Civil Aviation Directorate that “had nothing to do” with the
issue of passenger ticket discounts.
Concepción, which complies with the Supreme Court ruling, shows its “gratitude” to the people and institutions that have given them support and solidarity during this “judicial ordeal.”
