The Supreme Judge places the Attorney General on the edge of the bench for a crime of revelation of secrets | Spain

The magistrate of the Supreme Court Ángel Hurtado on Monday has put the State Attorney General on the edge of the bench. The judge who Since October he has instructed the open cause to Álvaro García Ortiz For a crime of revelation of secrets linked to the couple of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has issued an abbreviated procedure, a step that implies the closure of the investigation and conviction, by the instructor, that there are sufficient indications to judge the head of the Public Ministry. In the car, Hurtado introduces a conclusion that he had not incorporated so far: according to the judge, García Ortiz acted « following indications received from the government’s presidency. » The instructor does not explain what data this thesis bases, but ensures that the Attorney General leaked the mail of González Amador’s lawyer « taking advantage of » the information published in The world On the night of March 13, 2024, which gave the false version of the events that the Chief of Cabinet of the Madrid President, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez.

The step taken by Judge Hurtado takes the case against García Ortiz to a new phase, which, predictably, will lead to a trial that will be held in the coming months in the Supreme Court. It will be the first time that the State Attorney General is felt on the bench, unless he present his resignation before that date. Public Ministry sources have pointed out on Monday that the Attorney General reiterates his innocence and will not resign: « It reaffirms in their commitment in their commitment to continue defending the action and integrity of the institution that represents in front of it, » these sources point out.

The Organic Statute of the Prosecutor’s Office (EOMF) provides for the suspension of employment and salary for prosecutors against the processing auto (the equivalent of that dictated by Hurtado), but García Ortiz is out of the race while it is a general fiscal (it is in special services), so, according to fiscal sources, the statute is not applied. However, the pressure, after the order dictated by Judge Hurtado, will be huge.

The Supreme Court opened a cause for revelation of secrets to the Head of the Public Ministry for the alleged filtration to the media of an email sent on February 2, 2024 to the Prosecutor’s Office by the lawyer of González Amadoraccused of fiscal fraud. Together with García Ortiz, the Criminal Chamber also prosecuted the Provincial Chief Prosecutor of Madrid, Pilar Rodríguez, who, on the night of March 13, 2024, sent the lawyer of the lawyer to the Attorney General, who denied the bulge that was launching the environment of the Madrid president, according to which it was the Public Ministry who had tried an agreement with González Amador.

Hurtado has failed to collect any evidence to prove that it was Garcia Ortiz who made the mail to the media. The mobile phone dump of the provincial prosecutor revealed that she sent her that mail At 21.59 of March 13, 2024, but in the crossed messages between them there were none to aim that this mail was later sent to some means of communication. The attorney general, meanwhile, has deleted all the content of his mobile phone, So the researchers have not been able to access their communications that night.

However, the magistrate argues that both acted « following indications received from the presidency of the Government (…) in order to win the story to that information », on whom the initiative had arisen to reach an agreement in an agreement of criminal compliance. The instructor considers that the mail whose filtration attributes García Ortiz contained « sensitive information regarding aspects and personal data of a citizen, in a private conversation between lawyer and fiscal that is subject to reserve and confidentiality criteria. »

The judge argues that the purpose of García Ortiz when claiming the emails exchanged between González Amador and prosecutor Julián Salto, who had filed the complaint for fiscal crime against him, was « to end up facilitating him to a medium, such as the SER chain, to give him advertising. » Both the attorney general and the provincial prosecutor were « conscious », according to the instructor, that the « confidential » content of that mail of February 2, 2024 would be revealed.

After the publication of this information (the SER chain spoke for the first time of that email at 23.24 of March 13), according to the car, “with the documentation he already had in his hands” García Ortiz, “was launched to make a press release” a press release where information was incorporated from the aforementioned mail of February 2, 2024, and, when the draft was finished, he sent it to Rodriguez. The provincial prosecutor, according to the judge’s story, gave him the approval of his content (…) without any opposition to his publication, which appeared with the letterhead of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Madrid, of which she was a boss, about 10:20 hours on March 14, 2024 « .

Poncloa filtration

The magistrate has even resurrected a possibility that seemed to have buried throughout the instruction due to lack of evidence: the conviction that it was García Ortiz who leaked the lawyer of the lawyer to La Moncloa. The Auto argues that « from the State Attorney General’s Office », and before the mail of February 2, 2024, a copy of him to Pilar Sánchez Acera, advisor to the then chief of cabinet of the president of the Government, Óscar López, had disseminated by other media. This, according to Hurtado, « made use » of the mail and instructed Juan Lobato, then spokesman for the Socialist Parliamentary Group at the Madrid Assembly, to exhibit it in his speech at the session of the 14th of the Assembly of the Community of Madrid, against the Madrid president.

The judge strongly pointed to Moncloa at the beginning of the investigation, but, after questioning Sánchez Acera as a witness, discarded charging it as several accusations asked for. Hurtado now recovers that part of the story, although it does not specify on what indications is based or suggests the possibility of extending investigation to the government’s environment.

The instructor points out that the mail of February 2, 2024 « contained sensitive information (…) of a citizen » whose lawyer had contributed with a view to a subsequent criminal process. The magistrate rejects that, as the prosecutor Salto declared before him, the content of the emails that he exchanged with González Amador’s lawyer was not secret. For the judge, they were « private conversations » between their lawyer and the prosecutor in charge of the case « that have a duty of discretion, due to which it is not tolerable any dissemination to third parties without authorization of the interested party, whose reputation could well be harmed by that revelation. » In addition, the judge adds-the filtration of the mail « calls the prestige » of the Prosecutor’s Office.

The defense of García Ortiz and Rodríguez maintain in their writings that, although they are attributed to them a filtration that has not been found, the facts cannot be considered a crime of revelation of secrets because several journalists have declared before the judge that they knew the content of the mail before it arrived in Garcia Ortiz. The jurisprudence of the Supreme Court warns of the lawyers of the investigated, establishes that it cannot be secret what has already been disseminated to the media.

The magistrate, however, does not share this approach. A secret, says Hurtado, is “a concept associated with personal privacy, which, therefore, enjoys constitutional protection, which is guaranteed the right of its owner, so that it is exclusively irregularly and against his will and disseminates them, with the consequent damage that this has been rigged;

In the case of mail Of the lawyer of the Ayuso couple, the decisive, according to the judge, is « the sensitive and reserved content of personal data » exposed in the mail « in a necessary scope of confidentiality. » The secret, according to the instructor, was the admission of two fiscal crimes by the Ayuso couple, information that came in the mail sent by the lawyer to the prosecutor of the case on February 2, 2024, but not in the one sent by the prosecutor to the lawyer on March 12. Therefore, although the businessman had authorized the Chief of Cabinet of the Madrid president to spread among the media the content of this second mailit was the filtration of the first that revealed the « secret. » « The truth is that the content of the latter, unlike the previous one, was leaked without its authorization, since the complainant what did not consented is that such sensitive data were disclosed, affecting their intimacy, such as those in this email. »