The Ministry of Interior has agreed to apply to the ex-treasurer of the PP Luis Barcenas Article 100.2 of the Prison Regulations, which includes the possibility of making his prison life regime more flexible in order to move to a situation of semi-liberty.
As confirmed to EL ESPAÑOL prison sources, the decision was made a month ago. At that time, the Board of Treatment of the Pirison de Soto del Real decided to propose him for that grade progression.
The department headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska later gave its approval. His departure will be effective immediately and he will already serve his sentence in that more lax regime.
The decision has been taken when Bárcenas has already carried out a large part of the program for the reinsertion of economic criminalsknown by the acronym PIDECO, which the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutionsdependent on the Interior, launched in January 2020.
permissions
Bárcenas, classified in the second degree or ordinary regime, has enjoyed several prison permits since he entered the Soto del Real prison in Madrid to serve a sentence of 29 years and one month for the first period of the ‘Gürtel case’.
The measure, which can be appealed by the Prosecutor’s Office, will allow him to leave prison to serve the rest of his sentence in a Social Insertion Center.
Bárcenas entered pretrial detention in mid-2013 and released it on bail on January 22, 2015. After Gürtel’s sentence, he returned to prison in May 2018. The court established that the maximum time for compliance would be 12 years, which corresponds to triple the highest sentence imposed, in this case, that of money laundering and against the Public Treasury.
He has already served a total of 6 years in prison, for which he has reached the figure of half the sentence. He has reached that situation, prison sources say, after several permits enjoyed “with a favorable prognosis.”
first permit
Former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas obtained the first permit to leave prison in April 2021. On the 10th of that month he returned to jail where he spent his entire sentence.
To grant him permission, the prison surveillance judge of the National Court took into account that Bárcenas spent a few months in pretrial detention before being tried and that he spent more than three years on provisional release without any incident or escape attempt.
[ Bárcenas regresa a la cárcel de Soto del Real tras disfrutar de un primer permiso de 6 días]
He also argued that his assumption of responsibility would be incompatible with the idea of breach; besides his family situation.
However, the judge did not admit that he progressed to third grade, given that the Treatment Board was precisely the one that proposed its classification in second degree. At that time, he was not granted the application of article 100.2 of the prison regulations, which now has been provided.
The judge estimated at that time that, although Bárcenas presented “numerous and qualified adaptation factors”, it was not “fully accredited”, beyond the circumstances of normal coexistence, a favorable evolution that would allow us to affirm that he was “capable of carrying out a regime of life in semi-freedom”.
But now, after accessing and completing the prison program for the rehabilitation of economic criminals, the magistrate has seen fit to give him semi-liberty.
