Tenerife Civil Guard Officer on Trial for Abusing Police Database

A Civil Guard officer, who worked at various stations on the island of Tenerife, is currently on trial. He's accused of revealing secrets, a crime for which prosecutors are asking for a five-year prison sentence. They also want him to pay compensation to the eight victims, with amounts ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 euros each.

The trial began yesterday and continues today. During the first session, several people gave evidence. These included experts from the Civil Guard's Internal Affairs department and the Provincial Command's Information Group. Officers from the Tacoronte, Candelaria, and El Rosario stations, where the accused had worked, also testified. The victims themselves spoke, most of whom were the officer's former romantic partners, their relatives, people they had previously been involved with, or fellow Civil Guard officers.

An expert from the Civil Guard's Internal Affairs department testified yesterday. This department received a tip in 2024, suspecting the officer was involved in criminal activities. The expert stated that the officer had an "overwhelming" number of unauthorized accesses to the police's internal database, known as SIGO. "Between 2019 and 2023, we found nearly a thousand searches in the system that the officer had no legitimate reason to make, as they weren't linked to any official investigation," he explained.

The officer stopped making these searches in mid-2023 because, from that point, he was on sick leave for depression.

Initially, investigators suspected the officer might be involved in drug dealing, selling medications, or illegal vehicle trading. This was based on the types of searches he was making, and they felt "nothing could be ruled out."

However, once they began auditing the system and looked closely at the officer's unique login details, investigators discovered he was looking up records of people he knew. These were mainly his romantic partners, relatives, or other Civil Guard officers.

The officer himself had been reported by his ex-wife for domestic violence years before these current events. He accessed her personal details, criminal records, and court cases stored in the police database. He also looked up records for his eldest daughter from that marriage, his ex-father-in-law, and a niece of his ex-wife for months, sometimes making dozens of searches in a single day.

He did the same with two other romantic partners. One of them testified yesterday that while they were dating, he sent her WhatsApp messages with photos of her past boyfriends or ex-husband, commenting, "What a bunch of croquettes you've been with." She admitted she "didn't realise it could be a crime, but rather thought that because he was a Civil Guard officer, he simply had access to those records."

The defense lawyer tried to argue that any colleague could have made the searches if the officer left his computer logged in with his access card connected. However, investigators stated this is impossible. They explained that system sessions automatically log out if there's no activity on the computer for one or two minutes.