The National Court has turned down an appeal from a suspect connected to the shoe industry in Elche who wanted to end the criminal investigation that started in 2018. The suspect said there was no evidence of misconduct. The Criminal Chamber, in a decision made on December 5th, 2025, upheld the decision of Central Court of Instruction Number 3 and supported the continuation of an investigation into a suspected multi-million euro VAT fraud.
The higher court’s decision came after the defendant appealed his first request to have the case thrown out and the proceedings archived, and then appealed to the investigating court. At this point, the National Court is not deciding whether or not someone is guilty of a crime. Instead, it is deciding whether the case should be dropped early or the investigation should continue based on what has been found so far.
The case is very complicated and involves claims of worldwide tax fraud, which is known as a “VAT carousel fraud.” The court ruling says that the operation being looked into happened between 2014 and 2017 and cost more than €44 million. The inquiry talks about a group of firms that were used to fake trade between EU countries and avoid paying VAT in Spain. These companies moved a lot of money between bank accounts without any real economic activity.
In their appeal, the defendant’s lawyers said that their client had not actively or intentionally taken part in the activity that was being looked at. They said that he was only a de jure administrator and didn’t have genuine authority over management or the power to make decisions. They said that the orders came from third parties who were acting as de facto administrators. From this point of view, the defence said that keeping the charges against the defendant was not based on facts and breached the right to effective judicial protection.
The appeal brief also stressed how long it had been since the lawsuit began. The defence spoke out against the emotional and professional effects of a long inquiry over eight years after the proceedings began. They remembered how they had been deprived of their freedom during the first phase of the proceedings and how the public discrediting had hurt their morals. In this case, the defendant’s work in the shoe industry in Elche was brought up as an area that was especially vulnerable to damage to his reputation.
Another important element in the appeal was the claim that the defendant was not treated fairly compared to other defendants who had been taken out of the case. The defence said that similar cases had been dropped, but their client stayed active in the case even though they didn’t think they had established any personal financial gain.
Money
The Public Prosecutor’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office both said no to dropping the case because of these considerations. They both agreed that the investigation was still going on and that, based on the evidence acquired, it was still plausible that the suspect was involved in the structure that was being looked at. The National Court agreed with this view and said again that the point of the preliminary investigation is to find out the facts and get a better idea of how much criminal responsibility there is.
The Court said in its decision that, at this point in the case, it cannot rule out the possibility that the appellant was an accomplice in the operation being looked into. Because of this, it thinks it is too soon to throw out the case and stresses that the objective and subjective breadth of the facts will be specified and their criminal viability will be judged in the future rule on the conversion to abbreviated proceedings. The court also says that the decisions being challenged are not justified. They believe that they follow the law and are not the result of a general or future probe. It also says no to lifting the precautionary measures that were put in place during the investigation, knowing that the defendant’s procedural status stays the same and that there is no reason to lift them right now.
The National Court’s judgement means that a complicated investigation with big economic and worldwide effects will continue, and the criminal outcome of a case that has been going on for almost a decade is still up in the air.
Author: Derek Appleton
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