The open case against the Attorney General in the Supreme Court for the filtration of an email from Isabel Díaz Ayuso's couple faces their final phase. In just over two months Álvaro García Ortiz will sit on the bench accused of revelation of secrets and the last movement of Judge Ángel Hurtado, the foreseeable opening of oral trial, has left new unknowns on the way to the most relevant judgment of the Supreme which various experts openly consider excessively.
Joaquim Bosch, magistrate in Valencia, explains that “it is not usual” that, for example, a supervisory court as a provincial hearing “is divided into this type of resolutions”, although the existence of particular votes, as has happened in the Supreme Court, “does not generate any problematic issue from the formal point of view.” What “happens very little,” he acknowledges, is that there is “a division of arguments as marked as in this case with the particular vote, which is very forceful.” There may be discrepancies but what we do not see just in this type of resolutions is that there are divisions so marked in writing, ”he explains to eldiario.es.
The opening of oral trial in the case about the confession of Alberto González Amador has come, as usual, after processing. Judge Hurtado decided to send both the Attorney General and Pilar Rodríguez, provincial prosecutor of Madrid, stating that both brought a plan to harm the businessman and his partner, the president of the Community of Madrid. The Appeals Chamber confirmed the decision about García Ortiz but lost Hurtado's car: there were no indications to judge Pilar Rodríguez. A particular vote, by magistrate Andrés Palomo, who initially had entrusted to exercise as a speaker, directly rejected that the attorney general had to be judged.
“It is not normal for a particular vote and what really attracts attention to this instruction is that the discrepancy is expressed in such sharp and critical terms as Judge Andrés Palomo did,” Manuel Cancio, a professor of Criminal Law at the Autonomous University of Madrid, explained to this newspaper. “That I had never seen it and it is an anomaly that, in my view, reflects that this is a very peculiar process where several red lines have crossed, that Palomo points to it in his particular vote.”
That a supervisor court leaves one of the accused, explains Judge Miguel Pasquau, of the Superior Court of Andalusia, is “usual”, beyond this case, when there are several parts with different representations and interests and “it is not surprising that the solution for them is different.” If the proceedings done in the investigation “are not especially eloquent” or if there are “reasonable legal disputes,” he adds, “it is not very surprising” that a supervisory room can correct the instructor. Yes, it considers it “less frequent” although not “unusual” and is “reflection of an intensity debate already held in the instructional phase.”
A bond above the usual
Several experts agree that the bond of 150,000 euros imposed by Hurtado to the Attorney General under threat of embargo is excessive. Both compared to other cases of revelation of secrets – such as the 2,000 euros that a police command had to pay Jordi Pujol Ferrusola – and in cases of sexual violence – the 100,000 euros paid to the victim of the Pamplona pack – where moral damage is also compensated.
“First, it is wrong that reference is made to the possible fine to impose, that is inappropriate, that calculation about the possible penalty of a fine, as the Constitutional Court has said, means ignoring the presumption of innocence,” explains Cancio. In his car, Judge Hurtado explained that this amount of 150,000 euros – half of what González Amador requested – responded to the reputational damage suffered by the publication of his confession and included possible fines and coasts of the process. In view of the evidence and circumstances of the case, he adds, the amount can be questioned: “It has a very high esteem of this subject's honor,” ditch.
The fixation of these bonds, except when the cost of the crime – for example, the theft of a car with a certain value – is a “discretionary decision”, explains Pasquau. A magistrate, he adds, “cannot incur the automatism of calculating depending on what the parties ask for” but “the instructor himself has to seem reasonable.” “What we do frequently is to look at which amounts has been condemned in more or less similar cases,” he adds, and even for the most serious crimes the compensation “are moderate compared to those that have been imposed in this case.”
Pasquau understands that in a case like this the magistrate takes into account “not so much the seriousness of the fact”, that is, a fact such as the confession that “in any case it was going to be known”, but the wide diffusion that it had: “all this has attracted the attention of the public and anyone that we see right now to González Amador we remember the incident, then I imagine that it will be the reason why it has put a much higher bail. crimes against sexual freedom, even girls. ”
In the same sense, Bosch is pronounced. “There are no rules priced in the law for this type of resolutions and a reasonable criterion are the preceding cases.” Also the example of the scales in traffic accidents, in which the family of a deceased can claim amounts close to 100,000 euros. “If a case of death is valued in this way, it seems to me that reputational damage would always have to go below” and only in “very justified assumptions” explain bonds of the caliber of the imposed on the attorney general. It also affects the need to separate the possible compensation of other responsibilities as a fine.
Several of these experts remember that the National Court imposed a bond of 120,000 euros to the former Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, for their role in the Kitchen operation, the police operation that allegedly allocated public and police resources to spy Luis Bárcenas and steal evidence that compromised the Popular Party. “It is very rare that they exceed 30,000 euros. Also here, about reputational damage, there are no data that says it is especially high and the Constitutional has said that it does not proceed to include the fine,” explains Bosch.
“Compensation seems to us a nonsense”
Félix Martín is spokesman for the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF), an association of which García Ortiz was also spokesman and that since the start of the proceedings has been critical of the management of Judge Ángel Hurtado. “The compensation seems to us a nonsense at all levels. Not only because it includes the amount of the fine but for the 150,000 euros, it is higher than the bonds for crimes against life,” explains this prosecutor specialized in homicides and murders.
He states that Hurtado has not taken into account “essential elements”, such as that García Ortiz is a public official and not “a great businessman with a great heritage.” In addition, the accusation that weighs on it does not include any “personal benefit or economic benefit” and, finally, criticizes that the final figure has been established without any reasoning. “Where does this calculation come from? In a crime against life, the damage is accredited, but you cannot act with the same automatism,” he criticizes.
The criticisms of this association extend to the rest of the oral trial opening car and the final phase of the case before the trial. That the prosecution of Pilar Rodríguez, provincial prosecutor of Madrid, was revoked and that a particular vote question the entire cause is something common, “explains Martín, and Hurtado's judicial story about the filtration of González Amador's mail is now questioned. “Much of the story has been a collusion between the attorney general and the provincial prosecutor to harm this man, and now it turns out that he has not committed any crime. Where is the collusion?” He asks.
