Prosecutor seeks jail for royalties agency man who spent €40,000 in brothels

The anticorruption prosecutor's office is seeking prison for a former manager at Spain's main royalty collection society, the SGAE, who allegedly charged nearly 40,000 euros to a company credit card for trips to brothels.

Pedro Farré was a top aide to SGAE's then-chairman, Teddy Bautista, who was himself arrested in July 2011 along with seven other SGAE members on suspicion of embezzlement. The investigation has since found that former managers of the collecting society diverted as much as 87 million euros between 1997 and 2011.

As part of that investigation, it emerged that Farré charged 39,552 euros to a credit card he received when he was made director of the presidency department at SGAE.

Financial director Ricardo Azcoaga is also being investigated as he failed to demand that Farré justify his expenses. The attorney is accusing him of being an accomplice to the misappropriation of funds, or at the very least of covering up for Farré.

According to the attorney's report, Farré, 42, was hired by Teddy Bautista in April 2002 to launch a special plan to combat piracy of copyrighted material. He was then given a credit card for a corporate account.

Using this method of payment, between November 2008 and May 2009 Farré paid for trips to escort clubs in Madrid. In order to conceal these personal expenses, Farré gave the accounting department "10 completely untruthful receipts" showing the word "catering" and a few handwritten notes referring to people or entities that would justify the expenses.

Even before finding itself caught up in the embezzlement scandal, the SGAE had been struggling with a poor public image after widely publicized cases in which agents attempted to collect royalties by slipping into weddings or demanding payment for performances of plays by authors who died centuries ago.