For some time now, judicial investigations involving well-known persons or entities have been conducted in parallel. On the one hand, the criminal trial. On the other, the media. The former clearly affects the latter and this was made clear last Friday by the president of the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), Rodrigo Buenaventuraduring his participation in a seminar held at the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Santander.
On the recent indictment of the chairman of Iberdrola, Ignacio Galánin the Tandem case, which investigates the spying by the police commissioner José Villarejo on behalf of quoted companies, Buenaventura noted that the affair has caused a "reputational erosion" not only in the electricity company, but also in the entire Ibex due to the contagion effect. The erosion of the brand's prestige has in fact had immediate consequences on Iberdrola's cash flow, which since the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office called for the indictment of its main executive has lost almost 5% on the stock market3 billion, which in absolute terms has led to a reduction in the value of the company of 3 billion euros.
In order to succeed in a legal case of this magnitude, it seems logical for those affected to hire the most prestigious lawyers. Galán, for example, has signed up a Carlos Domínguezwho defended Juan Miguel Villar Mir in the Púnica case. The lawyer managed to get the founder of OHL out of the thorny issue when he seemed cornered and will now try to do the same with the president of Iberdrola. The presence of a good criminal lawyer is therefore essential in these cases.
However, the latter can also affect the former. The weight of public opinion is capable of conditioning the drift of the procedure. One of the cases that best reflects this influence took place in Linares last March after a bar fight between two off-duty police officers and a citizen. In the aftermath of the unpleasant episode, the media carried the news with approaches which mostly portrayed officials as the aggressors and the citizen as the victim.
A large mass of the latter's supporters, in fact, took to the streets of the city the following day and held clashes with the National Police to protest what they saw as an unjustified attack by the oppressive forces against a father and his daughter. People even crowded around the courthouse at the moment when the judge had to decide on the release or pre-trial detention of the officers. After 'deliberating', the magistrate put them both behind bars and released the citizen.
Days later, however, the matter took a turn. The civil servants' legal defence appealed and the Provincial Court of Jaén ruled in their favour. He released The high court condemned the actions of the examining magistrate's court that had put the two police officers behind bars. The high court described the custodial measure as excessive and criticised the judge for taking the decision motivated by the "social alarm" that had erupted in the street at the time and just after what it called the "siege of the judicial headquarters". According to the Provincial Court, therefore, the judge's decision was motivated by popular pressure.
It seems clear, therefore, that those involved in legal proceedings with media repercussions must necessarily think about this double dimension, which involves having a good legal defence and taking into account the media drift. Both the judge and public opinion will subject them to different judgements, each with different rules, but the consequences of which will have repercussions on the other. To ignore the existence of this parallel lawsuit would be to ignore reality.
The former chief prosecutor of Seville, now a veteran lawyer, Alfredo Floreshe said it clearly in a report published by El País in 1998, when he was still a representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office. "There is no solution to parallel trials", said the man who investigated a Juan Guerra. There are hundreds more media outlets today than there were 23 years ago, when Flores uttered that phrase, but the maxim makes even more sense than it did then.
Proa, which has been advising companies on reputation for more than a decade, understands that within the framework of its work it is essential to take into account these judicial implications that sooner or later entities or individuals have to face. In some cases, for criminal matters, which, due to the possibility of imprisonment, make the front pages of major media outlets. But on many other occasions, for labour or commercial reasons, which do not necessarily imply a second level of media relevance, as there are multiple consequences for public opinion of the approval of a lay-off affecting a large part of the workforce (BBVA or Caixabank) or a shareholder conflict, to give just a few examples.
Anticipating events, being prepared for what may happen with a solid contingency plan or knowing how to take advantage of the favourable elements offered by the case itself are essential to moderate reputational damage to the brand which, without this work, can be deadly for the entity or person involved in the legal proceedings. The legal defence is not alone in this procedural fight that is no longer only being fought within the walls. Pushing forward cases that are not progressing, recovering prestige in the eyes of public opinion or simply explaining adequately what is happening in the framework of the case can help to maintain dignity and notoriety and even boost it in the midst of a crisis.
This text may be reproduced provided that PROA is credited as the original source.
Roberto Ruiz Ballesteros