The Provincial Court of Seville has issued an acquittal sentence for the three administrators of a citrus firm accused of having scammed a company linked to the House of Alba in the purchase of a batch of oranges that was never paid.
In March 2012, the company of the accused acquired, as it had been doing for years, a batch of oranges worth 116,221 Euro. In order to pay the invoices, the Zumosur Citrus Management entity issued several promissory notes that, upon reaching the due date, were replaced by others, given that the company did not have liquidity at that time. Eventually, they did not pay off the debt.
The thesis of the Prosecutor's Office was that the defendants, knowing that their company was on the verge of bankruptcy, had acquired the goods, even though they could not afford them. However, the Court says in the sentence that it has not been "in any way accredited" that the defendants did not intend to pay.
The Court considered the explanations given by the three administrators of the debtor company and by other workers "believable and plausible." They say that the economic problems came after the default of several clients; therefore, they did not know that there would be no liquidity in the company's treasury at the time of the expiration date of the promissory notes, because the crisis came unexpectedly. During the trial, some witnesses underlined the good commercial relations that Zumosur had for years with the company linked to the House of the Alba and how its turnover reached more than eleven million Euro per year at one point.
Source: sevilla.abc.es
