The leadership of the Popular Party is trying to disassociate itself from Víctor Soriano, the advisor it has hired in the Senate and who, at the same time, acts as a lawyer for Clean Hands in the case opened against the State Attorney General in the Supreme Court. The popular ones maintain that since Soriano appears as temporary personnel assigned to the First Secretariat of the Senate, he has no connection with the party, although the first secretary and, therefore, the one who hired him, is Eva Ortiz, senator of the PP.
The formation led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo has been reacting with different tension since on Tuesday elDiario.es revealed Soriano’s employment relationship with the PP through the Senate and that the lawyer himself acknowledged on his office’s website. When this newspaper contacted the Popular Party before the publication of the aforementioned information, PP sources in the Upper House pointed out that Soriano has been granted compatibility and that it was not his responsibility to assess the clients he has in his private office, in reference to to Clean Hands.
Once the information was published, those same sources contacted this newspaper and stated the following: “The PP has not hired anyone, it is the First Secretary of the Senate Board.” That is the same thesis that the leaders of Génova 13 tried to defend this Wednesday. “He is not an advisor to the Popular Party, he is not an advisor to the parliamentary group, he is an assistant to a member of the Board. And, therefore, it is up to them to give the appropriate explanations,” said the PP spokesperson in Congress, Miguel Tellado, first thing in the morning, in the corridors of the Lower House.
Pedro Rollán, president of the Senate and leader of the PP, asked his party partner this Wednesday to “analyze” whether he should keep Víctor Soriano, who is the lawyer for Manos Cleans in the case against him, as an advisor in charge of the public coffers. Attorney General of the State. “In any case, it will have to be the first secretary who analyzes whether his participation in a particularly high-profile cause could generate some type of conflict,” Rollán said last night in an interview on RTVE.
In reality, all parties use the options given to them by the different institutions to hire their trusted temporary personnel, through the positions they offer them when they achieve representation at the parliamentary tables –as is the case of Soriano–, in the Congress and Senate commissions, the ministries, general directorates, regional councils, councils or city councils. In the case of the Manos Cleans lawyer, his work in the Senate was achieved thanks to the fact that the First Secretary of the Board is in the hands of PP senator Eva Ortiz.
Soriano himself acknowledged his current connection to the PP on the same Tuesday, in a note he published on his law firm’s website, which remained visible overnight, but which he later deleted. “The lawyer Víctor Soriano, who heads the Soriano i Piqueras law firm, founded at the end of 2023,” said of himself, “he combines the private practice of his profession with an advisory position in the Senate, under the umbrella of the Popular Party,” He pointed out, before acknowledging that he is the lawyer for Manos Médicas in the case against the State Attorney General.
Soriano’s signing was published in the Official Gazette of the Senate in January 2024. His position is included among the temporary staff assigned to the First Secretariat of the Senate, in the position of level A temporary staff. The Upper House website has it However, assigned to the PP parliamentary group. Since then, he receives a salary of 56,937 euros per year from the Upper House and, therefore, from the public treasury.
Since last summer, he has also been the Manos Cleans lawyer in the investigation against the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, for the alleged leak of confidential data of the possible tax crimes of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner, a matter which precisely his boss in the Senate, Eva Ortiz, has referred to several times in recent months through her social networks. On the 14th, for example, he retweeted a message from Feijóo in which he said that he “would not be bothered by a State Attorney General charged by the Supreme Court for a minute.”
The reactions
The news reported by elDiario.es recounting Soriano’s dual status as PP advisor in the Senate and lawyer for Manos Médicas caused an angry reaction in the PSOE, the Government and some of the parties that support him.
“That we learned yesterday that this lawyer is working, is paid in the Senate, an institution in which the Popular Party has an absolute majority, well white and in a bottle,” pointed out the first vice president, María Jesús Montero, in statements to the press in Congress. The Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, considered on Cadena Ser that the PP is “financing and paying” the lawyer “of a far-right organization that persecutes progressive politicians and their families.”
“This gentleman from Clean Hands is in the pay of the Popular Party, therefore the PP can no longer camouflage itself behind the bushes, because it is behind the action against the State Attorney General,” stated the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente , in an interview on Telecinco. Furthermore, the PSOE spokesperson in the Senate, Juan Espadas, demanded explanations from the president of the Senate, the popular Pedro Rollán, for having Víctor Soriano on the salary of the chamber.
“Inform us how long this function has been carried out, that kind of double agent who in the mornings advises the president of the Senate and the Board and in the afternoons advises the case against the attorney general of the State,” he noted, in statements to the press collected by Europa Press. In Espadas’s opinion, this generates “a conflict of interest” between the Upper House and the Manos Cleans lawyer: “A body of the Cortes Generales and a trusted person appointed by the president of the Senate cannot clearly be dedicating a part of his time to advise the governing body of this institution and another part of his time to advise a case against the Attorney General of the State.”
From Podemos, its general secretary, Ione Belarra, considered that Soriano’s connection with the PP and Manos Médicas “proves, once again, that the right has an openly coup strategy and that it only respects the rules of democracy when it wants to.” They are beneficial.” Aitor Esteban, from the PNV, limited himself to considering this relationship “surprising” and the ERC spokesperson in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, responded to the press with the following phrase: “God raises them and they get together.”
Clean Hands has systematically appeared as a popular accusation in the main judicial cases against Pedro Sánchez’s entourage or that affect the Government, many times opened precisely due to a complaint from the organization itself. Currently, among other processes, he is prosecuting the cases against Begoña Gómez and David Sánchez, wife and brother of the President of the Government, respectively, as well as in the ‘Koldo case’, in addition to the aforementioned case against the State Attorney General.
Source: www.eldiario.es
