Álvaro García Ortiz’s first trial before the state attorney general was heard and sentenced this Thursday. The oral hearing ended with the intervention of the State Attorney’s Office, which sought Garcia-Ortiz’s acquittal. “The facts lack an evidentiary basis (…) The agency’s activities of providing explanations and issuing public statements to disclose information that cast doubt on the agency, the prosecutor’s office and the state attorney general have been criminalized,” lawyer Jose Ignacio Osio said. The law firm has accused Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner Alberto González Amador, a businessman charged with tax evasion and falsifying documents, of acting in “malice” for omitting relevant data in the complaint that brought Garcia Ortiz to court. Osio also claimed that it was González Amador himself who broke the confidentiality of the negotiations between the lawyers and the public prosecutor’s office by forwarding an email from the prosecutor in the case to the Madrid president’s chief of staff and providing details of the negotiations to journalists in Madrid. world.
The state’s attorney’s intervention brought to an end a historic trial in which the head of the department was the defendant for six days. Garcia-Ortiz could have exercised his right to have final words before the court president ended the hearing, but he waived this right. With this decision, the last arguments heard in court will be those of the state’s attorney. The state’s attorney has vouched for the attorney general’s innocence and is attempting to refute point by point all the evidence revealed hours ago regarding the charges. “There’s no evidence at all because it’s impossible,” he said. Hours earlier, the prosecutor’s office had also called for the attorney general’s acquittal on the same grounds.
One of the pillars of the defense is to deny that Garcia-Ortiz did not meet the requirements of the crime of disclosing the secrets that allegedly existed. The lawyer recalled that Supreme Court precedent states that something is no longer a secret once it becomes known to the media, and six journalists who testified as witnesses asserted that the attorney general knew before receiving the email that was the focus of the investigation what was allegedly confidential: that González Amador had admitted to the crime in order to reach an agreement to reduce his sentence. Mr Osio emphasized the “plausibility” of these testimonies, some of which were identified as WhatsApp messages embedded in the incident.
The defense rejects the prosecution’s argument that these witnesses are unreliable because they are protected by professional secrecy that prevents them from disclosing their sources. On this point, the lawyer cited Supreme Court Justice Andres Palomo’s dissenting opinion against García Ortiz’s prosecution, saying, “denying the validity of judicial testimony because the source could be identified and not doing so is a waiver of rights to a constitutional provision that is difficult to understand.”
But the law firm argues that even without the testimony of these journalists, Gonzalez-Amador’s knowledge of the crime was no longer a secret at the time García Ortiz received the email. Because it was the businessman himself and his aides who broke the supposed secret. The lawyer said the incident occurred when Ayuso’s partner forwarded to Miguel Ángel Rodriguez an email sent by the lawyer stating that the prosecutor in the case was willing to accept a compliance agreement. But so was González Amador himself when he spoke to local journalists on the morning of March 13th. world A few hours later, at 9:29 p.m., he reportedly signed a news report that falsely stated that it was a public official who had offered the businessman the deal.
The information included details of the agreement Ayuso’s partners were negotiating and quotes from emails sent by prosecutors to lawyers. “If a third party becomes involved in the ownership of a secret, the secret is lost,” Osio warned. “We’re going to have to ask ourselves whether talking to journalists and passing[emails]to his partner’s chief of staff is typical of the conservatorship he’s currently seeking. What he can’t do is reveal the terms of those agreements and then immediately say those conversations remain reserved.”
The defense also argues that even if the Supreme Court deems Ayuso’s partner’s secrets to have been exposed, there is no evidence that it was the attorney general who leaked the emails. According to the complaint, the lawyers sought to discredit the evidence and evidence the Supreme Court relied on in ruling against the department heads. Added during trial. Significantly, the email was broadcast in the media just an hour and a half after Garcia-Ortiz received it.
To legal experts, this is “reasoning of little value.” Because Madrid’s top prosecutor Almudena Lastra also had access to the email at the same time (she was five minutes ahead of the head of the ministry). Provincial President Pilar Rodriguez. and Virna Rodriguez, director of economic crimes. The lawyers further argued that the email became relevant when the El Mundo news was published at 9:29 p.m. And at the time, 16 other people (prosecutors and public prosecutor’s office staff) also had access “from their homes” through the generic email account to which González Amador’s lawyer sent the emails. Defense attorneys have questioned why the Supreme Court investigated only Garcia-Ortiz and Rodriguez (who it ultimately exempted) of them. “This is a gap in the investigation and there is no explanation,” he said.
Osio also believes there are other inconsistencies in the accusations against the attorney general, such as the attorney general’s deletion of messages and emails, as stated in the report. This is because the Civil Guard itself has admitted that it cannot confirm that the WhatsApp messages were deleted on the day he was indicted. Or the fact that, hours after the emails were revealed, Madrid’s top prosecutor told García Ortiz that “you leaked the emails,” and García Ortiz asserted that he replied, “That doesn’t matter now.” The defense warned that this was “speculation” and questioned its credibility, noting that Lastra did not mention this fact when he first testified about what happened in March 2024, and that he changed his interpretation in two statements to the Supreme Court.
The defense attributed the senior prosecutor’s words to a “bad relationship” with the attorney general. But that’s not all. The law firm also believes that Lastra has put a useful “bolt” on the fraud charges by Ayuso’s partners, which is why it did not even issue a press release on March 7, when it learned of the charges, in contrast to what it had done in other cases with less media relevance. He then made an “excuse” for not releasing the statement prepared by the Attorney General’s Office, even though the facts were already publicly available.
Mr. Osio also rejected the private prosecutor’s claim that Mr. Garcia-Ortiz’s leaking of the emails was a “preparatory act” for the distribution of the memo to begin a “saga of organized guilt” against Mr. Ayuso’s partners. “It is unsustainable,” the lawyers said.
Prosecutors seek a not guilty verdict
Prior to the defense’s intervention, prosecutors have also intervened, and the prosecutor’s office is also calling for the attorney general’s acquittal, as testimony heard at trial proves that García-Ortiz did not leak the emails, and in any case, the contents of the emails were not leaked. email When he received it, it was no longer a secret. “Even if there is a hypothesis that the emails were leaked when the state attorney general was in his possession, he was not punished at the time because the news was already known in many media outlets. He is certified in this case,” said Ángeles Sánchez Conde, giving credibility to the journalists who testified as witnesses, unlike the accusations made this Thursday.
Prosecutors stressed that WhatsApp from intelligence experts contributing to the case confirmed that details of the agreement between González Amador and the prosecutor’s office had been circulating hours before the attorney general claimed the email. Miguel Ángel Rodriguez also said he lied several times during his statements in front of the instructor. For example, when El Mundo assured that it did not spread a distorted version that it was the Ministry of Public Affairs that sought an agreement with the defense until its publication at 9:29 p.m., and when El Diario Es said that it did not contact Ayuso before publishing the tax evasion charges against his partner. Messages included in the lawsuit between Rodríguez and EL PAÍS journalists show that Rodríguez was already spreading falsehoods from around 7 p.m.
The deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court also highlighted the fact that the statements of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner, Alberto Gonzáezul Amador, and Madrid’s chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, show a “constant exchange of messages and a very fluid relationship between them,” noting that both “share a strategy of casting doubt on the victims” of González Amador’s fraud accusations. from the financial authorities to the prosecutor’s office.”
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