Miguel Ángel Rodríguez lied before the Supreme Court

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, chief of staff of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has emerged as the main defender of the “private citizen” Alberto González Amador, partner of the president of the Community of Madrid. In this campaign sustained for months, he has used half-truths, omissions and even falsehoods to support the fictitious story that the businessman is a victim of a “state operation” to attack his partner.

His lies reached the Supreme Court this week, where he appeared on Wednesday as a witness – with the obligation to tell the truth – in the case opened against the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, for the dissemination of an email related to the fraud investigation prosecutor to González Amador. At one point in his statement, he assured that no journalist from elDiario.es contacted him before publishing the first information about that case, according to sources present at that appearance.

A day later, the deputy director of this newspaper, José Precedo, also appeared as a witness and denied what Rodríguez stated. He assured that it was he himself who contacted Ayuso’s chief of staff to try to collect his version and include it in the exclusive that elDiario.es was going to publish. The journalist explained that he had first tried to contact, without success, José Luis Carreras, the president’s press officer. He then wrote directly to Díaz Ayuso’s chief of staff. Precedo and Rodríguez exchanged several messages starting at 9:50 p.m. on March 11, 2024, the eve of the first exclusive published on this medium about the tax fraud of Ayuso’s partner.

At that point in the statement, the investigator of the case, Ángel Hurtado, demanded that the journalist document what he had declared and summoned him for the next day. The media’s deputy director provided handwritten copies of his questions to the chief of staff and agreed to present his mobile phone with the complete conversation this Friday.

This conversation, which Rodríguez had denied on Wednesday, is now at the disposal of the magistrate after a judicial official had verified this Friday that the WhatsApp conversation that appears on the terminal of the deputy director of this medium corresponds with the documentation provided by this medium. half.

The conversation shows how the journalist tells Rodríguez that elDiario.es is going to publish a case of tax fraud by González Amador and asks him six questions related to the investigation by the Tax Agency and the one million euro apartment that the businessman bought after defrauding the Treasury, one of the two homes he enjoys, in the same building, together with the Madrid president. Both the questions about whether the president was aware of the fraud complaint like her partner, the accusation that she presented false invoices, and those that referred to the homes in which the couple resides did not receive any answers.

Rodríguez refused to answer all these questions, claiming that they had nothing to do with the Community of Madrid and wrote on four occasions: “You will see,” while describing what this medium was preparing to publish as “very serious.”

Request from the State Attorney’s Office

The contradiction between the journalist and the chief of staff – both witnesses in court – led the State Attorney’s Office, which defends the attorney general, to request for the second time the cloning of Rodríguez’s mobile phone to corroborate his version. The magistrate rejected the measure while waiting to receive the screenshots of that conversation that elDiario.es deposited this Friday and to review the statements as witnesses from this week, in which Ayuso’s chief of staff and eight journalists who published information about the emails exchanged between González Amador’s lawyer and the prosecutor who was investigating him, Julián Salto.

The State’s legal services consider it essential to access Rodríguez’s phone and thus be able to know the messages and calls that were exchanged on the key days of the alleged leak, from March 8 to 14. His suspicion is that during the afternoon of March 13, before the email subject to the investigation reached the hands of the attorney general, Ayuso’s chief of staff had already disseminated information to some journalists about alleged maneuvers by the Prosecutor’s Office and unfounded orders. policies to thwart an agreement.

In his statement as a witness in the Supreme Court, Rodríguez admitted last Wednesday that he had in his possession one of the emails exchanged between prosecutor Salto and the commission agent’s defense many hours before the attorney general had access to them. Different sources present in the statement indicated that Ayuso’s right-hand man pointed out that since the morning of March 12—shortly after elDiario.es uncovered the case—one of the emails from that chain, signed by the prosecutor and dated that same day.

According to the version given in the Supreme Court, it was the commission agent’s lawyer who provided him with the aforementioned email and he retained it for “38 hours” until at 10:27 p.m. on March 13, he sent its contents to a messaging group in which fifty journalists were present, once the content had already been disseminated by two media outlets, El Mundo and La Sexta: the newspaper spreading the hoax and the television network, denying it.

The message sent by Rodríguez was manipulated: it omitted that the prosecutor’s response was a response to an agreement offer that the businessman had made five weeks earlier and stated that the Prosecutor’s Office had withdrawn its alleged proposal due to “orders from above”, which triggered the reaction of the Prosecutor’s Office to deny the hoax.

The hoax “by orders from above”

Rodríguez not only spread the content of an email from prosecutor Salto that March 13. He also seasoned the content of the email with a statement that he subsequently qualified: the possible pact that was being explored at that time had been stopped “by orders from above.” Its objective was to imply that the leadership of the Prosecutor’s Office had stopped this possible agreement to prolong the judicial process against González Amador as much as possible and harm, as it has been stating for months, the Madrid president.

Ayuso’s advisor acknowledged for the first time before Judge Hurtado that he had spread the email and that this assessment was “opinion” and not “information.” He even went further when it came to justifying that tagline, which partly led the Prosecutor’s Office to deny his version, and explained to the judge that this was his perception of the case because he “has gray hair.” He repeated this argument a day later in several interviews, insisting on a hoax: in his opinion, if González Amador’s case had not already been settled, it was because the Prosecutor’s Office was holding it back.

The offer that, until now, the businessman has made has been to accept a sentence of eight months in prison that does not imply his entry into prison in exchange for recognizing his tax fraud and paying just over half a million euros between fines, tax debts and interests. In various interviews, Rodríguez has defended his hoax, alluding to the fact that this pact was proposed ten months ago and, to this day, it has not gone ahead in an organization as vertical as the Prosecutor’s Office. The reality is that González Amador was scheduled to appear in court on November 29, where the intention of the parties was to sign the agreement, and the appearance was suspended at the request of his defense.

That appearance was the judge’s third attempt to take a statement from him. His first statement, to which he attended with a wig so as not to be recognized by the media, was suspended due to problems summoning other defendants. His second summons was also suspended in June because popular accusations from PSOE and Más Madrid called, finally successfully, for more crimes to be investigated. His third summons, to which the Prosecutor’s Office attended with the intention of finally sealing the pact, was suspended without being summoned again at the request of González Amador himself.

What Rodríguez qualifies, today, as orders “from above” in the Prosecutor’s Office to stop the pact, was actually born from a document presented by González Amador’s lawyers on October 29 of last year. The judge had recently agreed to open a separate piece to expand the case and the businessman’s defense requested that, while his appeals were resolved, his statement not be taken “until Section 3 of the Provincial Court of Madrid rules.” He also asked to “accelerate the processing” of his resources as much as possible.

The judge’s decision came on November 5, a week later. “In accordance with the interests of the defense of those investigated, taking into account the reasons given, the suspension of the indicated statements is agreed.” That is to say, if the case against González Amador is paralyzed it is because his own defense requested it.

The six unanswered questions

The exact questions that eldiario.es asked Miguel Ángel Rodríguez were the following:

Did Isabel Díaz Ayuso know about the tax fraud that the Tax Agency attributes to her partner?

Did you have any information about his participation in the presentation of false invoices to artificially reduce the economic benefits of his companies?

Has the president of the Community purchased any real estate property with her current partner, as has been published?

Who pays for the home where the president of the Community of Madrid resides and how many properties are there?

Different media outlets have published that the two members of the couple purchased a home but, based on the investigations we have made, they currently live in two adjacent floors of the same building. How many homes have you bought and by whom?

If the second one is for rent, who pays for the home?