The Supreme Court has decided to sentence the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, to a fine of 7,200 euros and two years of disqualification for the leak of the confession of tax fraud by Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner. The judges consider him guilty of a crime of revealing secrets when they consider it proven that he leaked that email to the press on the night of March 13, 2024, when the Prosecutor’s Office was collecting all the information about the case to deny the hoaxes spread by those around the president of the Community of Madrid. The sentence, which includes compensation of 10,000 euros for Ayuso’s partner, is not unanimous and has two dissenting votes.
The disqualification that forces Álvaro García Ortiz to abandon his position at the head of the Prosecutor’s Office will not take effect until a few days, when the full sentence is known and notified. The Criminal Court has been divided to issue this sentence. Susana Polo, the reporting magistrate, and Ana Ferrer, were betting on acquittal and have remained in the minority. Polo has had to decline to present the resolution to the president of the Chamber, Andrés Martínez Arrieta, the content of which will be known in the coming days.
The trial was scheduled for sentencing on November 13 after six sessions in which García Ortiz denied having leaked or given the order to leak that document. “No, I have not sent it to you,” said the attorney general in an interrogation in which he only answered his defense and the few questions asked by the lieutenant prosecutor of the Supreme Court. “There is absolutely no indication, no proof that this mail arrived because the attorney general ordered it,” the State Attorney’s Office added in its final report before the case was heard for sentencing.
The attorney general then defended what he had claimed since the opening of the first proceedings in the Madrid courts: that the Prosecutor’s Office never harmed Alberto González Amador in his trial for tax fraud and that that night the objective of all his efforts was not to leak his confession to the press but, the next day, to issue a press release and deny all the hoaxes that were circulating. The hoaxes that, as spread at the time by Miguel Ángel Rodríguez and various media outlets, suggested that the prosecutor in the case had offered him a deal but that that offer had been withdrawn by “orders from above.”
The trial revolved for days around several key aspects in addition to whether there was evidence to blame the leak on the attorney general. For example, if the commission agent himself was the first to break the confidentiality of his emails by sending one to Miguel Ángel Rodríguez and allowing him to send it to dozens of journalists, or if the email and its content were already known to several journalists hours or days before and, therefore, its content was no longer secret. Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s chief of staff recognized and defended her hoax – “I don’t have any sources” – and provided some new ones during the trial: “The Treasury has not allowed her to reach an agreement,” he said without providing any evidence.
Up to 40 witnesses testified before the court over six sessions: journalists, prosecutors, politicians and a dozen agents from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard. The latter, led by Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Balas, staged the toughest session for the interests of the attorney general when they directly accused him of being the main suspect of having leaked the mail due to his “dominance” in the situation that night as the head of the Prosecutor’s Office. The State Attorney’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office understood that these statements confirmed what they already reported in the investigation phase: that the UCO and Ángel Hurtado only worked with the possibility that García Ortiz was the leaker and did not explore any other avenue, omitting relevant news and data in their reports and even cutting out messages.
Source: www.eldiario.es
