An email of 2015 shows how the then Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro, had access to a letter from the Anti -Corruption Prosecutor's Office belonging to the judicial case of Box B of his party, the PP, before he reached the parties personally in the procedure and, probably, prior to the fact that he was presented to Judge Pablo Ruz.
The only prosecutor in the case of the irregular financing of the PP was Antonio Romeral, now a key piece in the current investigation of Cristóbal Montoro. After the case of Box B, Romeral has promoted number two of anti -corruption and in 2023 he was appointed by his boss, Alejandro Luzón, to supervise and censure the actions of the prosecutor of the case, determined to expand the investigation against the former Minister of Finance against the criteria of his bosses.
The mail, to which Eldiario.es has had access, is sent by Felipe Martínez Rico, Chief of Cabinet of the Minister, on March 9, 2015, at 18:36:07. Martínez Rico refers to the 'mail' that his boss has open in the ministry with an address that hides his first name and first surname, but includes the second (aromero@minhap.com). Researchers have proved that it is the Montoro mailbox.
“Santiago has been sent informally the same document attached to Julia. Also without signing. It is communication of the prosecutor to Judge Ruz,” says Martínez Rico. Part of the importance of the mail lies on the date it is sent. The instruction of the most serious corruption case of the PP, that of its irregular financing for at least twenty years, was close to its conclusion. Who has received the document is Santiago Menéndez, then director of the Tax Agency and also charged in the cause of corruption for benefiting gas companies from the Ministry of Finance and through economic team. On the other hand, Julia is the head of the Minister's Secretariat and, according to another mail, she has been sent her homonym then in the Ministry of Justice.
Within the judicial case of Fund B, a legal confrontation with high voltage political consequences occurred in those days. The PP was played to appear as accused of a fiscal crime for not having paid the taxes corresponding to the black money of the entrepreneurs with which part of the reform of its headquarters had been paid.
The head of the Cabinet continues in the mail: “We still have no knowledge of any writing of Judge Ruz to the AEAT (the Tax Agency), but already has sufficient coverage to insist on its approach. At the moment, the AEAT is preparing written response (beginning of jurisdictional conflict) to the hypothetical written of Judge Ruz. Felipe.”
The traffic in the Treasury of the Anti -Corruption brief occurred in full judicial dispute between Judge Pablo Ruz and the popular accusations, on the one hand, and the Treasury, the Anti -Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the State Advocacy, on the other. The latter defended that political parties were exempt from paying for the illegal donations received. Even in three reports, the Tax Agency of the time of Montoro looked reports to the judge in that regard.
The mail sent by the Chief of Cabinet of Montoro to the minister reveals, in addition, that the Treasury had additional information of the cause, unofficially, and that that allegedly granted an advantageous situation to obtain its objective that the PP was not accused.
The prosecutor of the Montoro case, Carmen García Cerdá, sent a brief to Luzón on May 24, 2023 in which he insisted on the need to investigate this and another hundred emails seized in the Treasury. At one point in the brief, it refers to the severity of the mail mentioned in this information and its criminal relevance: “I consider that the facts can also be initially constituted, among other crimes, of obstruction to the justice, punishable in article 466 of the Criminal Code that punishes, as you know, to which I will reveal procedural actions declared secret by the judicial authority.”
On April 27, 2015, five weeks after the exchange of mails that eldiario.es, the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office, with the signature of Antonio Romeral, and the State Advocacy, presented their accusation writings, in which the PP It was out of the accusation for fiscal crime. The National Court, first, and the Supreme Court later, would corroborate the thesis that black money does not pay taxes. The Popular Party was convicted, however, as a subsidiary civil case for the crimes committed by its treasurer, Luis Bárcenas.
The popular accusations, true drivers of the case of Box B of the PP since its inception, were always very critical of the work of the anti -corruption prosecutor assigned to the case, Antonio Romeral, which they accused of not promoting the cause when not to hinder it.
As a milestone is the statement that led Bárcenas to provisional prison. After his statement, the Romeral prosecutor did not request imprisonment for the Treasurer of the PP. It had to be one of the popular accusations, Adade, who did so that Ruz could send to jail the guardian of the secrets of the Popular Party. The provisional prison of Bárcenas was the prelude to the treasurer's confessions about the irregular financing of the party since practically its foundation.
Romeral, in the case of Caja B and in the Montoro case
In the Montoro case, the Romeral prosecutor plays a fundamental role. The investigation has not been expanded to the use made by the Minister of Confidential Information of Taxpayers, Personal Enemies or Adversaries of Montoro, because the Chief of Anti -Corruption considers that it is an information traffic with legal protection and that there are no indications of crime.
Given the insistence of the prosecutor of the case, Carmen García Cerdá, because a separate piece was opened to investigate emails such as the one that reveals eldiario.es, Luzón put his second, Romeral, to guard the prosecutor's performance. García Cerdá cannot send any writing to the judge without the approval of the number two of anti -corruption. In line with his boss, Romeral has vetoed the new line of research.
The confrontation reached the celebration of a Board of Anti -Corruption Prosecutors, at the request of Carmen García Cerdá, where only four prosecutors supported his partner, compared to the 18 who positioned themselves on the light side. One of the toughest interventions against the prosecutor of the case, recounts sources present at the Board, was that of Antonio Romeral, the author of the brief that arrived in Montoro in 2015.
The emails seized in the Treasury in the course of the investigation to Montoro show how the minister monitored all the participation of the Tax Agency and the National Fraud Investigation Office (ONIF) in the judicial case of Box B, despite the fact that the experts of both agencies acted in judicial assistance and they had to respond only to the requirements of Judge Ruz.
The newspaper advanced last year The content of several mails that already revealed the intervention of Montoro in the judicial procedure and the maneuvers to save the PP. The PSOE used these journalistic information to address the Supreme Court, which had not yet issued a sentence for the resources to the National Court's ruling.
The Socialists claimed that the performance of the Treasury experts did not respond “to the general interests” and that they dedicated themselves to “defend particular interests, those of the party (PP) to which it was exonerated by fiscal responsibility.” The High Court dismissed the PSOE appeal alleging that it had been presented outside.
