The Supreme Court sentences the “king of coal” to four years in prison and to pay 24 million

2023-05-05 21:00:28

The mining businessman Vitorino Alonso, known as ‘the king of coal’, has been firmly sentenced to four years in prison and to pay 24.3 million euros for environmental damage caused in a protected space with the exploitation of the mine open sky Nueva Julia, located in the municipality of Cabrillanes (León).

The Supreme Court has dismissed the ten reasons for the appeal filed by the defense of the 70-year-old businessman from León, against the sentence of the Provincial Court of León that punished him for a crime against natural resources and the environment. The Second Chamber (Criminal) of the high court has also declared the subsidiary civil liability, in the payment of 24.3 million, of the entity Minero Siderúrgica de Ponferrada (MSP) and its successor, Coto Minero del Cantábrico.

The chamber of five magistrates considers that the company had an urban planning license granted by the Cabrillanes City Council, but that the exploitation works should be limited to work to be carried out in the perimeter of Common Rustic Land, “the license for the execution of any type of work on Rustic Land of Natural Protection Grassland and Scrub and on Rustic Land with Protection of Natural Areas of Special Interest”. However, the promoter occupied two plots without having the required license, “actions that were carried out with the knowledge of their illegality,” the resolution states.

Likewise, the court presided over by Andrés Martínez Arrieta states that the promoter “invaded” land belonging to the municipality of Villablino, when the mining concession was limited exclusively to Cabrillanes. An overreach that occupied an 18.8-hectare plot of land on Monte 280, a space protected by the Natura 2000 Network, whose invasion did not have any type of administrative authorization from the Territorial Delegation of the Junta de Castilla y León, nor from municipal opening license or urban planning by the Villablino City Council.

In addition, the court points out that the promoting entity “did not carry out the restoration work in the manner and conditions provided for in the Environmental Impact Statement, with the area of ​​land damaged being 424 hectares.”

400 hectares affected

The sentence, whose presentation corresponded to the magistrate Ángel Luis Hurtado, considers that in this case there is evidence that shows “the exaggerated environmental excesses that are declared proven.” To this end, it points out that the impact “is of such magnitude” that it offers samples that, with the naked eye, are detectable, such as topographic changes, the destruction of both the soil and all the vegetation, the existence of waste dumps or the clogging of the streambed by debris«.

For the Chamber, the invasion of the Villablino lands cannot be considered as something different and independent from mining exploitation, but rather as “one more excess than all those incurred by the promoter, some qualitative ones, through the attack on natural resources, and other quantitative ones, insofar as it expanded on land for which it did not have authorization, just as it did not have it for aggression against the environment, and all this based on authorizations that it did obtain, but which, in its development, he overstepped in all its aspects, always with the same lucrative purpose that guided all the proceeding of the convicted person.

The court rejects deriving criminal responsibility towards other executives or personnel of Vitorino Alonso’s company, and, in this sense, emphasizes that the appealed judgment correctly explains that the defendant was the owner, manager, director, supervisor and administrator of the company, which which implies that “the control of all his activity passed through his hands.”

It adds that the penalty imposed by the sentencing court is reasonable after taking into account the aggravating circumstances that occur in this case, the enormous extension of the affected area, more than 400 hectares, the more than four years that exploitation lasted, the enormous seriousness of the damages and risks caused, and the more than twenty-five million in which the repair of these was calculated.

Similarly, it rejects the complaint that the amount of compensation is excessive because it was extended to the entire mining area and clarifies that the Audiencia de León set it taking into account the objective quantification, authorized by the Council of Ministers on 25 October 2019, for the environmental rehabilitation of the open-pit coal exploitation Nueva Julia.

Last September it was learned that Victorino Alonso will not serve a sentence and will not have to pay any amount for another criminal proceeding: the destruction of the Neolithic site of the Cueva de Chaves to build a goat trough on his hunting farm in Bastarás (Huesca). The Criminal Court number 1 of Huesca sentenced him in 2016, but in 2018 agreed to suspend the execution of the sentence for three years based on Alonso’s declaration of financial insolvency to face compensation and on the lack of criminal records.