- The Spanish National Audience investigates EITB for alleged fraud related to musicians’ copyright. Another thirteen television channels complete the investigation initiated by Judge Ismael Moreno.
The case comes from the operation developed by the National Police in 2017 at the SGAE headquarters in Madrid and on several television channels and has served throughout the last decade to verify some dark practices of Anton Reixa when he was president of the SGAE.
In the midst of this case, which has splintered with EITB, is the practice known as the “television wheel”: Several SGAE partners committed between 2006 and 2011 a scam of around 100 million euros through this plot, registering the works irregularly.
For example, they took the original musical compositions released from copyright and recorded them on their behalf after minor modifications, in order to collect the rights of those pieces; and also recorded low quality compositions, both on behalf of the musicians who were part of the plot and of the people who were not musicians. Later on, these compositions were broadcast in nocturnal television programs, through which they were billed the money that corresponded to them as "authors".
In one year, SGAE accounted for 70% of total television revenues, although only 1% of the audience heard these songs.
They began to commit this fraud with a few songs, but over the years hundreds were recorded and, in order not to attract attention, they contacted music students to collect rights through them.
ETB's "Musika gaua"
Television was the last link in this fraud. Judge Ismael Moreno considers that these actions would not have been possible without the consent of the chains and therefore the facts have been imputed to them. EITB has not pronounced for the time being on this charge, but in 2018 the director of EITB Maite Iturbe offered a number of explanations in the Basque Parliament.
Iturbe explained that when Alberto Surio was CEO of EITB – at the time of Patxi López’s presidency – the public broadcaster hired the company of Rafael de Tena, one of the people involved in the case of the SGAE wheel, to broadcast the “Musika gaua” programme. He placed pieces of jazz and classical music in the early morning hours. According to Iturbe, the possibility of withdrawing this programme from the OPE was already on the table in March 2017. However, he also defended in the Basque Parliament the legality of the contracts he maintained with De Tena last summer.