The decision of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, to keep Madrid Network's accounts hidden against all odds has just collapsed in the Supreme Court. With an order dated the 8th and to which elDiario.es has had access, the high court forces the Madrid Government to provide the annual reports of the public-private entity to which the former regional president, Esperanza Aguirre, transferred in 2011 no less than 80 million of a low-interest loan recently granted then by the Executive of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to the Community of Madrid. Non-payment of loan repayment installments by Madrid Network have already cost the Madrid treasury more than 50 million.
Through the order of last day 8, the Contentious Chamber of the high court inadmisses the appeal of the Community of Madrid against the ruling handed down in April by the Superior Court of Madrid (TSJM) and which ordered the Ayuso team to provide the reports of the Madrid Network association to a citizen who had requested them through the transparency portal. By rejecting the appeal filed, the Supreme Court makes the ruling of the TSJM final.
To keep secret the accounts of an opaque association that for still unknown services paid 1.8 million to the company founded by former minister Cristóbal Montoro and for which Ayuso had worked until obtaining a seat in 2011, the regional government has been arguing the following: disclosing these documents “implies real, clear and direct damage to the economic interests of numerous companies that are mentioned in them.” The association discretionally distributed the public money from the loan transferred by Aguirre. And he did it among companies of which the identity of only a few has been revealed, three of them linked to former senior officials of the PP. The loans to these three companies were unsuccessful.
Now, and in the same line as the TSJM, the Supreme Court emphasizes that, although the law exceptionally allows the evasion of the Transparency Law when public information can cause serious damage to a company, in this case the Community of Madrid has not explained at any time why it clings to such an argument: “Such arguments must be invoked and accredited by the entity that alleges them, without a generic statement about eventualities being valid. losses without a complete justification regarding the incidence and the specific and determined dangers that access to specific information would generate in the operation and commercial and economic activity of the company. And furthermore – the order adds next –, for such damages to close the door of transparency “they must be relevant and must be weighed in relation to the interests at stake (public interest and particular interests), it is already a matter of hindering full access to information as in cases of partial limitations.”
The agreement under which Aguirre transferred those 80 million to him stipulated that he had to pay each year to the Community of Madrid the repayment fee of the loan – about 9 million – so that, in turn, it would be paid to the Ministry of Science. But as the Accounts Chamber pointed out in its report on 2023, the constant non-payments of the association had already forced at the end of that year to cover with funds from the regional budget the hole of 51.89 million caused by the association's non-compliance. As of today, it is not possible to quantify how much the debt has grown.
The ruling of the Supreme Court, for which Judge Diego Córdoba Castroverde has been the speaker, emphasizes that there is no appeal given the lack of justification of the alleged damage that disseminating the Madrid Network memoirs would inflict on the companies that must appear in them due to their relations with the association: “And what happens in this case in which the Chamber (that of the TSJM that handed down the April ruling) concludes that the Community of Madrid did not sufficiently justify which data or details of the requested reports may be likely to cause damage to the economic and/or commercial interests of undetermined entities, nor that these damages could be configured as real and effective and not simply potential, in contrast to what the Community of Madrid alleges that said justification was found in the resolution of the General Directorate of Financial Policy and Treasury, which shows that the question does not actually refer to the investigation of the hermeneutics (interpretation of texts) of the precept that is alleged to have been infringed, but only to determining its applicability to the specific case, raising a question that is limited to the casuistic evaluation of the specific circumstances of this lawsuit, which as such do not have a special cassation interest, which is why the appeal must be inadmissible for processing.”
Although the order is dated October 8, last Monday – the 20th – the PP spokesperson in the Madrid Assembly, Carlos Díaz-Pache, escaped a question at a press conference about the Madrid Network and the veto of the parliamentary initiatives that the opposition has been presenting in this regard. “About Madrid Network – Díaz-Pache responded -, what I can tell you is that it is a matter that is judicialized and, furthermore, judicialized for several legislatures.”
From there, the deputy launched an unexpected statement: that “this matter is not the responsibility of the current Government of the Community of Madrid and therefore the current Government of the Community of Madrid does not have to account for the actions of other Governments.”
The Madrid Government's communications spokespersons have not yet responded to elDiario.es' request to present their version of the matter.