The AN starts oral lawsuit against Iberdrola Generación and four directors for raising the price of electricity

The judge of the national court, Ismael Moreno, has agreed to open an oral trial against Iberdrola Generación and four directors, as in 2013 the company “devised and put into operation a system to increase the price of energy sold” with the aim of “causing a rise in the price of electricity and harming consumers”.

In particular, the judge indicates that, “in order to achieve a “higher price in the electricity market”, they increased the price in the electricity offers for their hydroelectric plants Duero, Sil and Tajo between November and December 2013.

And they did, he adds, “at a level above the daily market price that could not match operations, despite the increase experienced in those days by spot market electricity prices, putting it at a cost optimum of “This situation determined the withdrawal of the programming of the above-mentioned power stations, that is, they stopped producing energy,” added the judge.

According to him, that decision was taken by Iberdrola’s management team, which consists of the Director of Energy Management, Ángel Chiarri Toscano; the head of optimization, resource management and trade, Gregorio Relaño Cobián; the person in charge of asset management, José Luis Rapún Jiménez; and Javier Paradinas Zorrilla, responsible for Short-Term Markets and Global Generation.

For the four directors, the prosecutor’s office is asking for two years’ imprisonment, respectively, with an additional denial of special qualification for employment or public office, profession, commerce, industry, commerce, in connection with the generation or commercialization of electrical energy, and a fine of 12 months with a daily quota of 400 euros, with subsidiary personal liability in case of non-payment of 1 day of deprivation of liberty for every 2 unpaid daily quotas.

The Public Prosecution Service also demands that Iberdrola Generación be fined 84,891,272 euros, four times the profits made, as well as the confiscation of the profits made.

The “artifice invented by the suspect”

In his order, the instructor states that Iberdrola “broke the order of merit of the factories in the production dispatch, caused the reduction in the electricity generation of the hydroelectric power stations Duero, Sil and Tajo, and as a result the purchase operations will be compared with energy from combined power plants, which are more expensive and in a higher price range of between €80 and €90/MWh compared to the average price of energy from hydropower plants between €45 and €55/MWh”.

It was from December 24 of that same year, 2013, when “the change in weather conditions due to strong storms and winds caused the reduction in the energy price due to the significant contribution of renewable resources.”

“The consequence of the trick devised and carried out by the defendants was an increase in the electricity price of at least €7.156/MWh, causing a damage to demand of at least €107.340.000, taking into account that the same in the period to which the allegation related was 15,000 GWh and that the highest cost of Iberdrola’s action, as we indicated earlier, was EUR 7,156/MWh,” emphasizes the magistrate.

During that time alone, the company sent out a total of 2,965,779 megawatts, “which meant a profit of $21,222,818,” which would have harmed several marketers of that energy.