The State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, testifies this Wednesday as investigated before the Supreme Court for the alleged leak attributed to him by Alberto González Amador, partner of the president of Madrid’s president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
His appearance takes place one day after the court itself endorsed his appointment as head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. It is the first time that an attorney general declares as investigated. García Ortiz is summoned to appear at 10.00 a.m. before the magistrate Ángel Hurtado in the framework of the case opened last October in the Supreme Court for an alleged crime of disclosure of secrets, in which the chief provincial prosecutor of Madrid, Pilar Rodríguez, and the lieutenant prosecutor of the Technical Secretariat of the Attorney General’s Office, Diego Villafañe, are also being investigated. The statement of García Ortiz will take place after this week the magistrate rejected his request to postpone it to first question the partner of Díaz Ayuso. Hurtado assured that to “form an idea” of Gonzalez Amador’s position it was enough to read the complaint he had filed. The head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office will appear before the magistrate after more than a dozen witnesses, including the senior prosecutor of Madrid Almudena Lastra; the chief of staff of Diaz Ayuso, Miguel Angel Rodriguez; the former leader of the PSOE of Madrid, Juan Lobato; two press chiefs of the Prosecutor’s Office and several journalists. However, García Ortiz is the first investigated in this case to go to the Supreme Court. On Thursday, the provincial prosecutor of Madrid is scheduled to do so, and on February 5, the lieutenant prosecutor of the Technical Secretariat of the Attorney General’s Office. When appearing as a defendant, he will be able to invoke his right not to testify or choose whether to answer only to his defense or to all the accusations. Prosecutorial sources consulted by Europa Press regret that the instructor of the Supreme Court has not taken into account the agenda of the Attorney General at the time of setting his summons, since it coincides with a plenary session of the Prosecutorial Council that has finally been suspended. They also argue that the magistrate could have agreed to take García Ortiz’s statement in his office at the Attorney General’s Office. The instructor agreed to summon García Ortiz when considering that the conclusions of the reports of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard “provide weighty information” that comes to “underpin” his alleged participation in the denounced leak. Specifically, he highlighted the report in which it is assured that he had a“preeminent participation” in the leak. From what has been investigated so far, the magistrate understands that “there is a basis to presume that” the head of the Public Ministry “was the person who directed the steps that led to” the leak, “taking advantage of the situation of superiority that he held over other prosecutors”.
Pact mail
It should be recalled that the starting point of the investigation – when the case was still before the Madrid High Court of Justice – was the press release issued by the Public Prosecutor’s Office on the morning of March 14 following the publication in ‘El Mundo’ the previous evening, which stated that the The Public Prosecutor’s Office had offered a pact to the lawyer of Díaz Ayuso’s partner in an investigation for alleged tax crimes, in order to dismantle what it considered a “hoax”.
The press release from the Prosecutor’s Office, which explained that the settlement proposal came from the defense, included information from the e-mails exchanged between Gonzalez Amador’s lawyer and the prosecutor for economic crimes in Madrid, Julian Salto. The Supreme Court, when it took up the case, ruled out that there was a disclosure of secrets in that statement because the information it offered had already been published hours before in the media. Thus, the high court put the focus on the leak to the press – during the night of March 13 – in the e-mail in question, the one that Gonzalez Amador’s lawyer sent on February 2 to Salto offering to acknowledge two tax crimes in exchange for reaching an agreement.
Messages at the Prosecutor’s Office
The instructor considers that there are “objective elements” that “point to the fact that only after García Ortiz received the mail (…) at 21:59 hours is when its dissemination took place”. That is why he agreed to maintain his condition of investigated. Hurtado stresses that the night of March 13, after the publication of ‘El Mundo’, the Prosecutor’s Office entered “in a dynamic of frantic exchange of communications, led by García Ortiz, among those whom Rodríguez herself would end up calling ‘Fortuny’s team'” in her Whatsapp messages. In the order in which he agrees to the summons of García Ortiz, the magistrate reviews the evidence that, in his opinion, are “sufficiently indicative” of the “relevant” role of the attorney general in the disclosure of “a reserved and confidential information that should not have been disclosed”, starting with the “transfer of the exchange of messages” that occur on March 13 between 21:59 hours –when García Ortiz receives in his particular ‘gmail'” the mail in question– and 23:51 hours –when the ’email’ is published in Cadena SER–. It also highlights “the steps” that the attorney general took “before” to “get hold” of the email, the“revealing moments of urgency and great tension that took place under his leadership“, and his “intervention” in the elaboration of the press release.
The Attorney General’s motive
The UCO has not been able to analyze in the case the chats and emails of the attorney general because, as indicated in the report on what was seized in the office of García Ortiz, found “zero messages” on their devices.
In an attempt to recover this information, the magistrate has asked for help from Whatsapp and Google; He has also asked the IT department of the Attorney General’s Office if it has formatted the mobiles — previous or current — of the head of the Public Ministry. In the same vein, the instructor has demanded from the delegate of data protection of the Prosecutor’s Office a copy of the internal regulations in which the Public Ministry used to justify that “zero messages” were found in the devices of García Ortiz; this after the prosecutor of economic crimes who investigated the boyfriend of Díaz Ayuso denied knowing any protocol for the deletion of messages. As part of the investigation, the UCO has analyzed the devices of the chief provincial prosecutor of Madrid, in which messages exchanged with García Ortiz were found; and the cell phone of the former leader of the PSOE of Madrid, Juan Lobato. The ex-secretary of the Madrid socialists voluntarily surrendered after learning that Pilar Sánchez Acera — advisor to Moncloa — sent him the letter that the defense of González Amador sent to the Prosecutor’s Office to reach an agreement.
The Guardia Civil concluded that several government officials had access to the email before it was published in the media.
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