Constitutional Court reopens amparo over penal code in Zaragoza laundering case; mixed rulings in other appeals

The Constitutional Court has again admitted an amparo appeal in the long-running case of a Zaragoza property developer and his two former partners, all convicted by the Superior Court’s criminal chamber for laundering funds allegedly from drug trafficking. The core dispute is procedural and legal: which Penal Code applies — the 1990 code argued for by the defence, or the 2005 code relied on by the ordinary courts. Defences maintain that under the 1990 codification the alleged facts would not satisfy the elements of the offence and therefore should lead to acquittal; the ordinary courts contend the 2005 code is more favourable in terms of penalties. This is the second time the question has reached the Constitutional Court. On the first occasion the Court sided with the appellants and ordered the Superior Court to redraft its sentence; the Superior issued a virtually identical ruling. Sentences included a three‑year suspended prison term for the principal defendant, now 80 and under investigation in Andorra since 2004, fines that together amount to about €2 million, and the continued seizure of several property units that have been under state control for over two decades. With the new admissibility order, the Constitutional Court will again have to address whether it should more precisely instruct the Superior Court on which Penal Code must be applied.

In a separate decision, the Constitutional Court dismissed the amparo appeals of two defendants in the well‑known “drug maid” case, a major cocaine trafficking prosecution in Pas de la Casa. The defendants had challenged a revised ruling by the Superior Court that corrected material errors but maintained prison sentences of five and three years. One defendant argued the original ruling failed to account for his being under 21 at the time of the offences and had confused “400 grams of hashish” with “400 euros of hashish,” producing an overvaluation of the quantity. The other argued the criminal chamber had improperly aggregated two lesser offences into a single greater offence. The Constitutional Court found that the Superior Court’s revised decision did not violate their fundamental rights. On the minority issue, the Court noted that Andorran law does not specifically regulate continuous offences that begin during minority and end in adulthood and that resolving how the rule applies falls to the ordinary courts; the Constitutional Court’s role is limited to assessing rights violations and it deemed the courts’ reasoning reasonable and founded. Regarding the alleged misapplication of precedent, the Court concluded the appellant had not substantiated a breach of the principle of equality with supporting case law, and it found the criminal chamber’s interpretation of a continued offence neither illogical nor absurd.

In a third ruling, the Constitutional Court granted amparo to a woman who had been treated as a shareholder in proceedings over a credit guarantee after the bankruptcy of transport company La Hispano‑Andorrana. The claimant had signed a personal guarantee for a Crèdit Andorrà loan of €225,000 granted to the bankrupt company and argued she acted at her husband’s request and had no managerial role or shareholding in the failed firm. The civil chamber of the Superior Court based its joint‑liability decision on an incorrect premise that the appellant was a shareholder of La Hispano‑Andorrana. The Registry of Companies, however, shows she was never a shareholder of that company; her only holding was a ten‑percent share in another legal entity, Montmantell. The Constitutional Court held that the civil chamber’s reasoning rested on a manifestly erroneous factual premise, producing a logical gap that violated her constitutional right to a decision founded in law. The Court’s grant of amparo does not annul her status as guarantor or automatically relieve her of financial responsibility; rather, it orders the civil chamber to revisit the claim without the error and to determine, with proper legal motivation, whether she may be treated as a consumer and whether joint liability for the credit remains appropriate.

Taken together, the recent decisions underscore the Constitutional Court’s continued role in policing whether lower courts properly ground their rulings in law and fact, and its willingness to intervene when reasoning rests on incorrect premises or when fundamental procedural questions—such as which Penal Code applies—have not been adequately resolved.