Judges annul 52 fines against Primor imposed by labour inspector

Javier Recio

Málaga

Friday, 25 April 2025, 12:30

Malaga-based perfumery and cosmetics retail group Primor has started to see the light at the end of the tunnel after a judge cancelled 52 of the fines imposed by the same labour inspector.

The official visited 42 of 44 shops that Primor has in the province and issued a total of 268 reports, citing infringement, obstruction and liquidation. The fines amounted to almost 30 million euros, which Primor appealed to the court.

The civil servant had inspected 30 companies, under which the Primor brand is marketed, all on his own initiative and for all the matters he could investigate, i.e. social security, occupational risk prevention and labour relations, and for the maximum period allowed by law (four years prior to the date of the inspection).

One of Primor's companies - China Red - was inspected by other officials in 2019 and 2020 and was fined a total of 74,416 euros. However, the inspection on the same matter, carried out later by the official Juan B., ended with a sanction of almost three million euros.

"In total, he fined nearly 30 million euros, 15,000% more than the same companies had been fined in the numerous inspections they had undergone in the previous four years," said owner of Primor Juan Ricardo Hidalgo.

Faced with such serious discrepancies and fines, the company suspected that it was being persecuted by the inspector and representatives went to the headquarters of the labour inspectorate, but they were not received. All this led to a series of complaints between Juan B. and Juan Hidalgo. The official informed his boss that the owner of Primor had coerced, threatened and slandered him during an inspection. This matter was referred to the prosecutor's office, which in turn referred it to an examining magistrate's court, which opened preliminary proceedings in 2021.

In this procedure, the inspector appeared as a private prosecutor. This detail is relevant, because the courts have annulled numerous sanctions precisely for this reason, understanding that the official should have abstained, that is, that he should not have inspected the company against which he was going at a criminal level, because it could be understood that he had a manifest enmity - one of the causes for abstention or recusal.

In October 2021, the court dismissed the complaint against Primor's owner, considering that there was no evidence of the offences that the inspector Juan B. had accused him of. Shortly after the complaint, Hidalgo filed a complaint for prevarication against the official. That complaint was dismissed in November 2021.

However, the inspector was summoned to testify as a defendant on 24 April, and then again on 26 May.

To date, the courts have annulled around 50 sanctions. A total of 16 have ruled in favour of the company due to a lack of cause at the beginning of the inspector's actions; 23, because the court considered that the official should have abstained due to the existing complaints; 6, for misuse of power; and 19, because the judges maintained that a convention applied by the inspector to recalculate the Social Security contributions does not apply, according to lawyer Jorge León Gross.

In financial terms, these court rulings have already reduced the penalties imposed by 15 million euros, although there are still dozens of legal proceedings to be settled. However, the company has had to advance five million euros to the Social Security Treasury and the regional ministry of employment as a result of the aforementioned inspections.

SUR has had no success in trying to obtain statements from the inspector and the head of Malaga's labour inspectorate.