The judge of the Supreme Court investigating the state attorney general, Álvaro García Ortizordered last Wednesday the entry and search of his office, the first step in the case. The image is completely unprecedented in this democracy: several agents of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard spent more than 10 hours at the headquarters of the State Attorney General’s Office carrying out the dump of all of García Ortiz’s computer devices..
The Supreme Court indicted the attorney general for an alleged crime of disclosure of secrets on October 16. Now, the instructor of the case must find out whether García Ortiz leaked the e-mails exchanged between the lawyer of the boyfriend of Isabel Díaz AyusoAlberto González Amador, and the Prosecutor’s Office, which was investigating González Amador for alleged tax fraud and false documentation. The first step taken by Judge Ángel Hurtado in his investigation is to send the UCO to the office of the investigated party to gather as much information as possible, including the dump of the e-mails exchanged by García Ortiz since March 8days before the leak.
The prosecutorial career, immersed in a tremendous turmoil since October 16, an astonishment accentuated even more after the entry of the UCO in the State Attorney General’s Office, agrees on one issue: the situation is serious. But the prosecutors’ associations disagree in their analysis of the problem that has put the institution in this “harmful” and “embarrassing” situation.
The most conservative (and majority) sector blames the attorney general for remaining in office despite being indicted, while the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF) argues that the case should be closed “due to a manifest lack of grounds”..
On Wednesday, the judge investigating the case ordered the UCO to enter the building at number 4 Fortuny Street, in Madrid, that same morning, starting at ten o’clock. The letter specified that the search would last “the hours that would be necessary for the completion of this diligence, expressly enabling the nighttime hours“. Sources who were in the building at the time of the search confirm to this newspaper that the agents remained inside until 23.00 hours.
It so happens that this Wednesday there was an act called at 13.00 hours in the headquarters of Fortuny Street. García Ortiz, the former Attorney General Dolores Delgado and Luis Moreno Ocampo, who was the first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and played an essential role in the trial against the Military Juntas of the Argentine dictatorship, were to participate in it.
With 11 minutes left before the start of the event, the State Attorney General’s Office reported that it had been suspended without giving any explanation. “It must have been quite out of control at that momentThere were people who were in his office and did not know that the Guardia Civil had entered,” a prosecutor source told this newspaper, who said he felt “truly embarrassed” by the situation.
Another prosecutor who occupies one of the offices in the building confesses to being perplexed: “They tell you and you don’t believe it”. This prosecutor found out that there was a search in progress when the clock struck 13.30 and he received the alert from a media outlet. He went to lunch, confirmed the information with some colleagues, returned to his office and left again at 19.00 hours. This source indicates that next to the State Attorney General was in the courtyard of the building the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Ángeles Sánchez-Conde, who is to represent the Prosecutor’s Office in the case against García Ortiz.
This is one of the issues that most worries part of the institution’s leadership: the impartiality with which Sánchez-Conde can act in the case. a case that is directed against his immediate superior. “Is it really not contaminated? It doesn’t seem reasonable to me,” sources from the Association of Prosecutors (AF), the majority in the race, commented to this newspaper.
In a communiqué sent this Thursday, this association defined the record as “a milestone that will take many years to erase from our collective memory”. The letter, addressed to the prosecutorial career as a whole, launches the following question about the role of Sánchez-Conde: “Is the intervention of the Lieutenant Prosecutor of the Supreme Court imaginable when depends directly on the person under investigation and on whom does its eventual renewal depend?”.
In view of this anomaly, the FA and the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors (APIF) consider that García Ortiz should resign. The latter association has appeared in the case led by Ángel Hurtado and has asked this magistrate to suspend the attorney general from his functions, a request that had previously been made by the association Manos Limpias. “That an attorney general is all day with the office registered, in a context in which his number 2 is the representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office in the case, is not normal,” a member of the APIF stressed to this newspaper.
They agree with this statement in the AF: “The image of the entry and search in the Attorney General’s Office cannot leave anyone indifferent. García Ortiz should resign”. Both associations consider that Ángel Hurtado’s decision to send the UCO to the Attorney General’s Office cannot be considered “disproportionate”.
While the instructor tries to find out who leaked to the media the fiscal pact of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner with the Prosecutor’s Office, and investigates the Attorney General for this leak, overturning his electronic devices seems “the most effective measure”, they say. Even more so when professional secrecy allows journalists to keep their sources hidden.
In the Progressive Union of Prosecutors, however, they do not agree with the step taken by the instructor of the Supreme Court. It is evident in a communiqué issued on Wednesday, in which the UPF highlights “the highly harmful consequences of the judicial decision not to file the case, not only for the institution of the Public Prosecutor’s Office but for Justice as a whole”. The record of the UCO, is for the UPF “an ostentatious and manifest example”. of these consequences.
The association concludes the communiqué by “a public appeal to prudence and moderationto respect for individuals, for their presumption of innocence and for the constitutional role exercised by prosecutors”.