The charges that could confront the one who filtered the agreement of Messi

Afterwards that The World filtered the agreement of Messi in which it knew what wins the Argentinian star with the Barcelona (555.237.619 gross euros to credit in four seasons), exists the possibility that the one who filtered it confront legal sanctions, since so much the directive of the Catalan group like "The Flea" announced legal actions.

In this regard, El País consulted to several experts, between them to the lawyer penalista Álvaro Escudero, the one who explained that, for the moment, is very little likely that The World confront legal problems for having published the agreement of Messi. "In principle, I see very little likely that the media can incur in penal responsibility for publishing the news", said. In this coincides the partner of Broseta and magistrate in excedencia, Alberto Dovecot. "Could understand that the publication has public interest, by what would be protected by the freedom of information".

However, the source that provided him the agreement to The World would not run with the same luck. "In this case we could be in front of a crime of disclosure of secrets", explains the legal expert that said crime is penado in the article 197 of the Penal Code, and is punished with economic penalties and penalties of prison of one to four years.

Besides, the Penal Code establishes which circumstances can aggravate even more the penalty for the mentioned crime. One of the cases, and that it is applicable to the case of Messi, is if the information in question spreads it to the public, or if the author of the crime, well was by his charge or position, was forced to keep this private information. In this case, the penalty could be of five years in prison.

Damages and prejudices

Another point to take into account, is that the affected will be able to sue to the one who have made the leak by damages and prejudices. Although for this, explains Dovecot that the manager of the leak has to be identified "and that the demandantes (in this case Messi and the Barcelona) test the disorder that has caused him the publication".

Dovecot adds that this stage would be difficult that occur, since, in spite of the impact mediático of the news, "in general the clubs know the conditions with that are hired other players". In this regard, the partner director of Ruiz Huerta & Crespo, John of God, indicated that even if it did not know the exact figure of the wage of Messi "himself that there were data on the quantity that contributed to Inland revenue" and this would do difficult to test the damage has caused the scoop of The World.

If the offender is an employee of any of the entities connoisseurs of the agreement (The Barcelona) or was one of the involved in the signature of the agreement, this could confront from the possibility to suffer a disciplinary dismissal and even economic sanctions. Since, generally, agreements of this nature are used to to include agreements of confidentiality. "The quantity depends on what the parts have negotiated, so it varies in each case", added Dovecot.

Sanctions of the AEPD

The expert in data protection, Ricard Martínez, signals that the leak of the agreement of Messi is a rape to the duty of confidentiality of the data. Also that affects to the right to the privacy of the interested (Messi and the Barcelona), regarding the "economic privacy". Martínez limited that, if it arrives to know that the leak made it some member or employee of the club, in addition to the already mentioned sanctions, also could suffer one of the Spanish Agency of Data protection (AEPD).

"It could confront to a sanction by part of the Agency". However, it remembers that any of these cases can give while the manager was not identified. It considered that the author of the leak could identify if "it existed some mechanism of trazabilidad of the information". Finally, it indicated that it is little likely that the referred media confront sanctions. "Up to now, the Agency has given prevalencia to the right to the information, whenever it appreciated a public interest in the information".