SPAIN Law and Practice Contributed by: Gabriel Rodríguez-Ramos, RODRIGUEZ RAMOS ABOGADOS
– ie, Presidents of Provincial Courts, High Courts of Justice, the National Court and Supreme Court judges, in order to ensure that these appointments do not cast any doubt on the independence, impartiality and transparency of this process; • corruption prevention in respect of prosecu - tors, includes: (a) reconsidering the method of selection and the term of tenure of the Prosecutor General; (b) establishing clear requirements and pro - cedures in law to increase transparency of communication between the Prosecutor General and the government; and (c) exploring further ways to provide for greater autonomy in the management of the means of the prosecution services. The current Prosecutor General is being inves - tigated by the Supreme Court for leaking con - fidential information and data (ie, confidential communications between lawyers and prosecu - tors) to the media and to the public, concerning pre-trial investigations involving the sentimental partner of a key leader of the opposition party. The Supreme Court has ordered an entry and search of the Prosecutor General’s office, seizing all his digital devices to investigate the offence. The 2024 EU rule of law report in the European Union with reference to Spain (24 July 2024) rec - ommends the following. • Continue to strengthen the statute of the Prosecutor General, in particular regarding the separation of the terms of office of the Prosecutor General from that of the govern - ment, taking into account European stand - ards on independence and autonomy of the prosecution.
• Proceed to adopt legislation on lobbying, including the establishment of a mandatory public register of lobbyists. • Strengthen the rules on conflicts of interest and asset declarations of persons with top executive functions, including by reinforcing the independence and sanctioning power of the Office for Conflicts of Interest. • Step up efforts to address the challenges related to the length of investigations and prosecutions to increase the efficiency in han - dling high-level corruption cases, including by finalising the reform of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The last OECD report (phase 4 – particular chal - lenges and positive achievements) linked to the Anti-bribery Convention published on 8 Decem - ber 2022, criticises the fact that to that date, not one company has been sanctioned for foreign bribery and recommends: • take necessary steps to more proactively detect and enforce anti-bribery legislation; • with due respect to judicial independence, ensure that application of foreign bribery laws is not in practice subject to a restrictive inter - pretation by law enforcement and judiciary; • provide training to tax officials on the detec - tion of foreign bribery and on the applicable requirement for reporting suspected offences to law enforcement officials; and • establish a national database for all ongoing cases with a view to ensuring co-ordination of foreign bribery investigations nationally and maintain statistical data on cases involving foreign bribery. 9.2 Likely Changes to the Applicable Legislation of the Enforcement Body There have been the recent legislative modifica - tions, as discussed previously, affecting both the
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