The State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, has sent a letter to the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) in which he demands that this body recuse itself from the case opened against the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office for an alleged crime of revealing secrets and refer it to the Supreme Court. The attorney general understands that the case being investigated affects him, since he personally gave the order to send a statement to the press to deny a hoax spread by the Government of the Community of Madrid and that affected the president’s partner. Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Only the Supreme…
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The State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, has sent a letter to the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) in which he demands that this body recuse itself from the case opened against the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office for an alleged crime of revealing secrets and refer it to the Supreme Court. The attorney general understands that the case being investigated affects him, since he personally gave the order to send a statement to the press to deny a hoax spread by the Government of the Community of Madrid and that affected the president’s partner. Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Only the Supreme Court is competent to take on a case that involves the State Attorney General, argues García Ortiz, who defends the order given and affirms that he would give it again.
Last March, the Madrid Government of the PP leaked to the press an email that the Prosecutor’s Office had sent to the lawyer of Alberto González Amador, partner of President Díaz Ayuso, offering him an agreement in the procedure opened for the two tax frauds confessed by him. . Ayuso’s chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, turned that communication into a hoax by maintaining that “someone from above” had ordered the last-minute withdrawal of the tax pact offer to González Amador. The truth was that the lawyer of Ayuso’s couple was the one who had long before offered a compliant agreement to the Prosecutor’s Office to avoid jail time for his client, by acknowledging the crime and paying those defrauded plus a fine of half a million. euros approximately. To clarify this and respond to the hoax, the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office distributed a statement to the press informing of this previous offer from González Amador’s lawyer, and he reacted by denouncing the public ministry for revealing secrets by disseminating his personal and tax data. .
González Amador earned two million euros in 2020 for an urgent intermediation between two companies for the sale of masks during the worst of the pandemic. A year later, he tripled his income as a collaborator of the Quiron group, one of the main clients in the Community of Madrid. When he declared before filing the corporate tax for these two years, he presented false invoices, where he implicated almost a dozen businessmen, to justify expenses that he did not make and avoided paying what he was owed: 350,000 euros in total. When the tax inspection uncovered the fraud, González Amador’s lawyer acknowledged the facts to avoid a trial that could put him in jail.
García Ortiz already publicly assumed responsibility for what happened—the dissemination by the Prosecutor’s Office of a statement that revealed González Amador’s recognition of the facts—during a speech at an official event. The attorney general understands that this order did not imply any crime of revealing secrets—because the information about the case was already in the media before—but rather responded to the duty of transparency required of the Prosecutor’s Office. He now also assumes responsibility for these events through a letter addressed to the three judges of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid who opened a case following the complaint filed by Alberto González Amador. The TSJM accepted the complaint for processing and has begun to summon witnesses. Among those cited is the chief prosecutor of the Community of Madrid, Almudena Lastra, who supposedly initially resisted sending the media the statement that denied the hoax and demanded that the attorney general give her the order in writing.
The investigating magistrate of the case requested information from the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office about “who was the specific natural person who intervened in the decision to make said press release public and the highest person in charge (in rank) of the prosecutor’s career who agreed or gave the approval. “good to the decision to spread the statement.” However, the procedure already shows that the person who decided to spread the note was García Ortiz. And, in the letter sent this Monday, the attorney general explains to the TSJM that the dissemination of the note effectively occurred due to his “express and direct” instructions, a few hours after the hoax that the Prosecutor’s Office was the one who had offered an agreement. González Amador was disseminated by The world and other means. García Ortiz defends his actions by addressing the following considerations to the Superior Court:
— “Freely receiving truthful information constitutes a fundamental right enshrined in article 20 of the Spanish Constitution. As a European judicial association has recently pointed out, correct information represents a duty towards citizens and a guarantee of transparency, which is in turn a crucial component of the rule of law and a precondition for ensuring public confidence in the correct functioning of the judicial system.”
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— “I come to reaffirm that the press release issued by the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Madrid, through the communication service of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, was fully in accordance with the law and responded to the legally entrusted function of informing the public opinion of events that occur within the jurisdiction of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (article 4.5 of the Organic Statute of the Public Prosecutor’s Office).
— “No secret is revealed when the information disseminated in a press release had already circulated widely and properly in the media. The duty of confidentiality cannot be considered violated when the object of the disclosure is already known to everyone, since what is already in the public domain is not a secret.”
— “I must draw attention to the fact that it is, to say the least, surprising that it is exclusively the members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office who are being judicially investigated for these events, while Alberto González Amador’s entourage—indicated by the aforementioned media as their source of information—appears “only as the accusing party.”
— “That statement, which — as has already been pointed out — I would re-sign and order to put an end to a hoax and protect a colleague and extraordinary Prosecutor, was limited to denying, with chronologically systematized facts, fallacious and interested information previously published by some media, as well as to provide objective and impartial information after the succession of disparate publications and the public dissemination of emails that affected the honorability and professionalism of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.”
— “The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid lacks jurisdiction to investigate the facts related to the dissemination of the press release from the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office because it corresponds to the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court as long as its publication is not would have occurred without my prior authorization and my express and direct instructions.”
