Álvaro García Ortiz has informed the Minister of Justice by letter that he is resigning as State Attorney General after being convicted by the Supreme Court. “In the absence of greater specificity” about the sentence, of which only the ruling is known, García Ortiz announces his resignation as an “act due” to the Prosecutor’s Office and “to all Spanish citizens.” “To my credit I am convinced of having faithfully served the institution to which I am honored to belong, with an unequivocal vocation of public service, sense of duty and institutional loyalty,” he claims after showing his “deep respect” for the judges’ decisions.
The resignation of García Ortiz leaves in the air who will occupy the position of highest authority in the State Attorney General’s Office. The Government announced last week that it had launched the process to appoint a new attorney general but, in the meantime, that responsibility falls on an interim basis to the ‘number two’ of the Public Ministry: María Ángeles Sánchez Conde. The lieutenant prosecutor of the Supreme Court who has defended her innocence in this case.
The Supreme Court made its ruling public last Thursday: Álvaro García Ortiz was sentenced to two years of disqualification, a fine of 7,200 euros and to compensate Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner with 10,000 euros for the leak of his confession of tax fraud in March 2024. A decision that came after a week of deliberations and with the court divided. Two progressive magistrates of the Criminal Chamber remained in the minority requesting the acquittal of the attorney general and announced a private vote against.
The sentence has not yet been drafted and its terms are not known, but its consequences are: it forces García Ortiz to leave the leadership of the State Attorney General’s Office when notified. The Public Ministry also analyzes whether this conviction for an intentional crime, as explained in the career regulations, implies the loss of his status as a prosecutor and his expulsion from the career.
Álvaro García Ortiz denied before the Supreme Court that he had been the leaker of the email with which Carlos Neira, Alberto González Amador’s lawyer, offered a deal to the Prosecutor’s Office in exchange for acknowledging that he had defrauded the Treasury of 350,000 euros. “No, I have not sent it,” he said in response to one of the few questions asked by María Ángeles Sánchez Conde, lieutenant prosecutor of the Supreme Court.
His objective on the night of March 13, 2024, he added, was to collect all the emails and make a press release to deny the hoaxes that some media and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Ayuso’s chief of staff, had been spreading for hours: “We made the determination, all together, that what we have to do is defend the absolutely impeccable performance of the prosecutors.”
The execution of his sentence will not advance until the complete sentence is notified and the specific terms of the Supreme Court’s decision are known. Then you will be able to file – with little chance of success – an incident of annulment before the Criminal Chamber itself and then go to the Constitutional Court for protection.
Source: www.eldiario.es
