The Supreme Court judge who is investigating the attorney general, Ángel Hurtado, has issued an order in which he maintains the declaration as a defendant of Álvaro García Ortiz for this Wednesday and in which he downplays the leaks and hoaxes that Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, head of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s cabinet, he starred in the tax fraud case of Alberto González Amador, partner of the regional president. The magistrate acknowledges that there is “controversy” about whether he was the first to leak an email about the case on the afternoon of March 13, but he minimizes the effect that this may have on the case and the investigation into the attorney general: “I don’t know. “you can understand the impact that email may have,” says Judge Hurtado.
In this order, the magistrate even questions whether González Amador can be considered a “confessed fraudster”, the origin of the more than ten lawsuits that the businessman has initiated against politicians and journalists demanding compensation that is close to half a million euros between all of them. so to him.
The defenses had requested several proceedings from the magistrate, including the uploading of the messages sent by Ayuso’s chief of staff on the afternoon of March 13. The various testimonies have revealed that he was the first to disseminate to several journalists an email that the prosecutor Julián Salto had sent to González Amador’s lawyer, a leak that caused movements in the Prosecutor’s Office to deny the false information about the case that he himself was sending. : that the Prosecutor’s Office had offered a pact to the businessman and that it had been stopped by “orders from above.”
The judge refuses to turn over Rodríguez’s phone and explains that his role in the leak of that email does not affect whether it remains a possible crime that, in addition, another previous email from González Amador’s lawyer was leaked offering a pact and a confession to the Prosecutor’s Office. “It is not possible to understand the impact that this email of March 12, which was disseminated based on the authorization of the person to whom the secret concerns, could have if it is to minimize the significance of the one of February 2.”
That previous email with the businessman’s confession, which was published in full on the morning of March 14 by El Plural, was circulated according to the judge “based on the actions of a third party unrelated to the confidentiality” who “filtered it surreptitiously to the press without authorization.” In this order, the judge even explains that Alberto González Amador cannot be considered a confessed fraudster: “It appears in certain media and areas that Alberto González Amador is considered a confessed fraudster, without being one, with the reputational damage that this entails. ”.
The magistrate also rejects procedures such as calling more journalists and González Amador himself to testify and maintains the summons for this Wednesday as the attorney general’s investigator. The other two investigated will later testify: the provincial prosecutor of Madrid, Pilar Rodríguez, and the lieutenant prosecutor of the Technical Secretariat of this organization, Diego Villafañe.
García Ortiz’s statement
Álvaro García Ortiz will become this Wednesday the first attorney general of the State to appear as an investigator in a criminal case. He will testify under the accusation of having leaked an email with which Alberto González Amador’s lawyer, in February 2024, acknowledged his tax crimes before the prosecutor who was investigating him and opened up to seeking an agreement: pay half a million in fines and debts and accept eight months in prison in exchange for not having to actually go to prison.
Judge Hurtado has written in several records that, in his opinion, there was a coordinated strategy within the Prosecutor’s Office to, on the night of March 13, obtain and leak that confession to the press to harm the businessman and his partner. At the moment, the case has not produced any concrete evidence about that leak, so the judge relies on reports from the Civil Guard to affirm that García Ortiz had a “preeminent role” in that leak.
García Ortiz’s defense, carried out by the State Attorney’s Office, alleges from the beginning that the attorney general did not participate in any leak and that, furthermore, by then this information was known and the objective of the Prosecutor’s Office was not to reveal any secrets but to make a statement to deny false information about the case published in various media. Hoaxes that Miguel Ángel Rodríguez had been spreading among journalists for hours.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s own chief of staff acknowledged before the judge that González Amador sent him one of those emails on the morning of March 12 and that he spread it among dozens of journalists on the night of the next day, according to his version once his Content had already been published by El Mundo. Various witnesses contradict his statement: he distributed that version among several media hours before the first information from El Mundo.
The judge, in his order, downplays the role that Rodríguez played in the leaks and how he triggered the Prosecutor’s Office’s movements, understanding that the case revolves around the leak of another email: the one from February in which the lawyer de González Amador recognized his tax fraud of 350,000 euros.
Source: www.eldiario.es
