Supreme Court upholds 800-euro fine imposed on prosecutor for leak to newspaper in Spain

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The administrative chamber has upheld the serious disciplinary offence that the former attorney general brought against a subordinate in Barcelona a year ago for disclosing details of a draft sentence for sexual assault

Mateo Balín

;Madrid

Thursday, 18 December 2025, 20:34

With the conviction of Spain's former attorney general Álvaro García Ortiz for disclosing confidential information still pending, the Supreme Court upheld the fine of 800 euros imposed in December 2024 on García Ortiz's subordinate prosecutor in Barcelona, who leaked a draft sentence for a sexual assault offence to a media outlet.

The administrative chamber has confirmed the decree issued by the then attorney general for the commission of a serious disciplinary offence against the aforementioned subordinate, who was found to have revealed information known to her in the course of her duties. In its ruling, the eight-judge court dismissed the prosecutor's appeal in full, in which she claimed procedural irregularities in the administrative process followed.

In her appeal, she stated that leaking the draft to El País had not undermined the presumption of innocence. According to her, key mitigating factors had been overlooked, which she said weakened the evidence and supported alternative explanations in her favour.

According to the proven facts of the sanctioning resolution, the prosecutor communicated the contents of the draft judgment by phone to the private prosecution in criminal case 15/2020 for a crime of sexual assault committed against a man in a nightclub. According to the disciplinary ruling, she then leaked it to the media "outside the channel regulated by internal instructions of the prosecutor's office, where she was assigned and exercised her functions".

"Careful assessment of the evidence"

The prosecutor had obtained the draft through a consultation with an official of the provincial court of Barcelona, who had printed out a copy and warned her that it had not been signed or notified to the prosecutor's office and the solicitors. The news about the contents of the draft was published by the aforementioned newspaper. After learning of its dissemination, the judicial body issued an order informing the parties that a judgment had not yet been handed down in the proceedings, according to the proven facts.

The administrative chamber now considers the "careful and adequate assessment of evidence" contained in the sanctioning resolution by the attorney general's office to be sufficient to justify the declaration of liability. A civil servant also acknowledged that she had given a copy of the draft ruling to the prosecutor after being asked to do so by the latter, with the warning that it had not been notified to the parties.

The news about the contents of the draft was published in the digital edition of El País at 10.46am on 9 February 2024 with the headline: "Man sentenced to five years in prison for raping another man in the dark room of a gay nightclub in Barcelona". The article included information on what had happened in the trial and some details from the draft sentence, with express reference to a dissenting opinion. It did not include the surnames of the defendant or the names of the judges, but it did include the name of "the prosecutor in the case".

The sentence was finally sent to the parties on 15 February 2024 and the defence tried to use this leak unsuccessfully to overturn the conviction. The difference with García Ortiz's sentence is that his case was processed through the criminal route (two-year disqualification), while this administrative procedure only examined the internal responsibilities of the sanctioned prosecutor.