The former PSOE activist Leire Díez has asked the judge investigating her for alleged crimes of influence peddling and bribery to declare audio from the case null and void, such as the one provided by prosecutor Ignacio Stampa in which she presents herself as the “right-hand man” of the then Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán. However, the instructor has decided to reproduce them before both she and businessman Javier Pérez Dolset declare themselves accused this Monday.
In a letter to which Europa Press has had access, the former militant asks Judge Arturo Zamarriego to decree “the nullity of all the recordings and everything derived from them, expelling them from the proceedings.” He refers to that of Stampa, about a meeting he had with the prosecutor in which Díez is heard introducing himself as “the person from the PSOE”, and the one held in the office of lawyer Jacobo Teijelo, in which favors were offered to the investigated businessman Alejandro Hamlyn in exchange for compromising information about charges from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Prosecutor’s Office.
Díez considers that these recordings constitute an illegitimate interference in the rights to privacy, honor and self-image of those affected, data protection and professional secrecy and confidentiality of communications, “since they are carried out surreptitiously in a private setting.”
The judge had planned to play the audio provided by Stampa before listening to Díez and Pérez Dolset, so he has agreed that both enter the courtroom to listen to the recording along with all the parties – defenses and accusations – as a prior step to the interrogations.
The magistrate considers that Díez was the leader of a group that sought information about commanders of the UCO and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. For the judge, the former socialist militant “leads” a “continued and coordinated criminal action” with Pérez Dolset and the journalist Pere Rusiñol – the third investigated – to “gather compromised or irregular information” in order to “annul or waste” investigations in “relevant cases that affect politicians and businessmen”, as stated in a ruling.
The investigations led by the Investigative Court Number 9 of Madrid are based on several complaints against the former socialist militant after the audios were released in which she is heard offering favors to the investigated businessman Alejandro Hamlym in exchange for sensitive information. In addition, the judge ended up incorporating the complaints presented by prosecutors Stampa and José Grinda, who denounced an alleged attempt at bribery by those investigated.
The Prosecutor’s Office demanded that the investigator join the complaints, considering it necessary to investigate the facts “jointly” because “the pattern of action is exactly the same.” Prosecutor Juan Pablo Nieto indicated in an appeal that it is “fundamental” the “singularity that these alleged bribe offers have as their main force, which gives them credibility, the alleged appearance that Mrs. Leire Díez has managed to create, that she speaks on behalf of high levels of the State.”
In his opinion, it is “evident” that the connection between the accused is allegedly about “manipulating heterogeneous lawsuits that sometimes affect politicians and other times businessmen, but the three would collaborate in a criminal plan united by the coincidence and need to denigrate the two aforementioned institutions”, in reference to the UCO and Anti-Corruption.
According to the recording provided by prosecutor Stampa, the main investigator held a meeting with him on May 7 in search of sensitive information along with Pérez Dolset and the businessman Luis del Rivero, in which Díez presented himself as the “right hand” of the then Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, and as “the person who put the PSOE in place.” “I’ll transfer later,” he assured.
Díez assured that the meeting was “strictly confidential.” “It is a meeting that stays here, but let’s say that I am the person who put the PSOE to see what was behind all this,” he said. And Pérez Dolset stated that when the accusation of Begoña Gómez, Pedro Sánchez’s wife, became known, “the president already said to clean everything,” “without limit.” “The police who falsify reports, out. The prosecutors who hide evidence, out. The guys who fabricate cases, out. And the politicization of the judicial system,” he said. Both assured Stampa that both Sánchez and the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, and the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, would be informed of the meeting. “They will know,” he guaranteed.
Puente: “Maybe what she says is more than reality”
The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has assured that he has “neither expectation nor concern” about Leire Díez’s statement this Monday before the judge. “I haven’t followed this serial very much. I’m not interested in anything, honestly. It seems more picturesque than anything else and I don’t think anything relevant is going to come out of it,” said the minister during a Europa Press breakfast briefing.
Puente has also pointed out that “we would have to see how far Leire Díez’s “embedding” in the party goes. “Maybe what someone says or what she herself tells is more than reality,” said the head of Transport, who indicated that he “did not know” the ex-militant and did not “know of her existence.”
In his opinion, political parties “are very large entities to which people come together for all kinds of purposes.” “There are those with very good purposes and there are those with less good purposes or with less ability or less intelligence, but it is a serial that has not interested me much, honestly,” the minister reiterated.
Source: www.eldiario.es
