The investigation commission on the alleged espionage to Ayuso ends without clearing up any unknowns
Ten sessions and no unknowns cleared up. The investigation commission on the alleged espionage of Isabel Díaz Ayuso has concluded its work this Monday with the declaration of the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, who has starred in a tense confrontation with the spokesmen of the municipal groups during the hour Just how long your interrogation has lasted. Ángel Carromero, who was also summoned, has not attended. Now there are the conclusions that the municipal groups have to draw up, although according to the statements made by the respective spokespersons, no big surprises are expected.
This Monday, in the morning, all the prominence was monopolized by the sit-in given by the former general director of the coordination of the Mayor's Office, Ángel Carromero. Despite the fact that it was he himself who asked to change the date and pointed to this Monday, May 9, so that they would find a place for him to testify, in the end he decided not to appear at the municipal group building on Calle Mayor in the capital. where all the sessions have taken place.
Already in the afternoon, Almeida's statement has been dominated by strong tension with the opposition spokespersons -except with Vox, who has taken his side-, whom he constantly interrupted without even letting them finish their questions. In it, the mayor has not left the script that he has always maintained: that there has been no espionage on Ayuso or his relatives, also denying that public money from the Municipal Housing and Land Company (EMVS) or the EMT was used to that end. In addition, the mayor has accused the spokesmen of the "left" groups of having "already drawn up the conclusions, ignoring the truth, which is that there has been no espionage here on the regional president", with whom now, before circumstances, has been reconciled.
However, those ten sessions have not served to clear up two of the main unknowns that hung over the alleged espionage, which Isabel Díaz Ayuso herself considered valid in a public appearance on February 17, once elDiario.es had uncovered the case of contracts to acquire sanitary material that the Community of Madrid granted to a company linked to his brother Tomás, and for which he took a commission in the midst of the pandemic. “I never thought that the PP leadership could be so cruel,” the president went on to say.
All this gave rise to the biggest internal crisis that the PP has suffered in its long history as a party. Not only did Pablo Casado take the lead, giving way to the arrival of the Galician Alberto Núñez Feijóo. It was also a Pyrrhic victory for Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who at the end of this month she will be appointed president of the PP in Madridwithout rivals, once the mayor decided to withdraw from the battle and has announced that he will now put himself at your service.
The first question that has remained unanswered after these ten sessions is why Ángel Carromero resigned if, according to Almeida, he was not involved in the attempt to hire detectives in order to access banking or tax documents of the brother of Isabel Diaz Ayuso. No one has been able to answer it. In the absence of Carromero, the most repeated version of his dismissal, also by the mayor himself, has been that he did so "to be able to defend himself against the accusations made against him by some media outlets", and to "not damage the reputation of the townhall". The fact is that although according to most of the testimonies of the EMVS and EMT officials who have declared these days by the commission that the espionage did not materialize given the internal controls that exist to hire and use public money with those purposes, some indications suggest that it was attempted. But there is no proof.
To find out, Almeida himself said that he had opened an "internal investigation" of which nothing is known either because it was not documented. But the mayor has taken hold of the fact that two other reports certify it: one from the EMVS Ethics Commission, and another from the Office against Fraud and Corruption of the Madrid City Council itself, which decided to provisionally file the case.
The second, and no less important unknown, is who ordered these investigations to be carried out on Ayuso and who was the one who contacted the owner of the Mira detective company, Julio Gutiez -another great absentee from the commission-, the same one who as declared last week by the former president of the Community of Madrid, Ignacio González, spied on him in Colombia by order of the PP himself. In his statement, González gave a master's degree on how the PP spends it when it comes to investigating each other and did not doubt that this time espionage has also been carried out on the Madrid leader, although he acknowledged that he had no record of it.
In this matter, the opposition groups suspect that there were at least three people involved: Carromero himself; David Fernández, former communication chief of the EMVS – who, like Carromero, left office as soon as the scandal broke out and did not want to testify – and an adviser to the president of the Usera and Moncloa-Aravaca District Board, Loreto Sordo, Francisco Jose Cruz Mata. But both Sordo and the counselor of the aforementioned councilor denied the majority in their respective statements. And the groups have no reliable evidence of these suspicions, except what has come out in the media. Hence, they insist that the commission is closed with "many lies" and without the mayor or anyone else from his team going to assume the "political responsibilities" that they believe derive from the case.
Another of the questions that remains in the air is to know why Almeida kept silent and did nothing for two months when "someone from Ayuso's entourage" - whose name he did not want to reveal - alerted him to the alleged espionage, which he hastened to describe as "rumor without consistency". Then the mayor only shared 'the secret' with the delegate for the Environment and Mobility, Borja Carabante, and with the Councilor for Security and spokesperson for the Consistory, Inmaculada Sanz. However, it was not until mid-January that he ordered Carabante to speak with the president of the EMVS, Álvaro González, so that he could investigate. But he also did not inform his government partner, Begoña Villacís, who felt very upset at being ignored again by the mayor. Despite everything, the leader of Ciudadanos has already said that she has no intention of promoting a motion of censure.
However, what has most outraged the groups since the commission was launched more than a month ago, has been the numerous absences that have occurred. The first who refused to go to testify was Ayuso herself. They could not locate his brother Tomás. The head of the autonomous Executive then believed that there are "commissions that are created to do political damage and not to investigate absolutely anything."
Neither did the former leaders of the PP, Pablo Casado, Teodoro García Egea, or Pablo Montesinos, nor any of Ayuso's advisers who were summoned by the groups agree to go testify. For Almeida, putting all of them on the list was an attempt by the "left" to "want to turn the commission into a circus": "We are not going to allow it," he warned.
For Más Madrid, the main opposition group, the Investigation Commission "has been a perfect staging of the PP's vicious circle: corrupt the institutions, sweep the garbage under the rug so that no one finds out, and if they find out, close the rows blaming someone else".
"In this case we can see the crater of the howitzer that ended, in the battle for regional power of the PP in Madrid, with the political careers of Casado, Egea, Carromero and David Fernández, without the PP allowing those affected to give due explanations, while the survivors, at least temporarily, have preferred the due 'omertá'," says Councilor Miguel Montejo.
For her part, the socialist spokesperson at the Madrid City Council, Mar Espinar, was forceful at the end of Monday's session: "Almeida has shown to have more face than an ox with phlegmon. He has not been ashamed, he has behaved unbecoming of a mayor and has confirmed, without dishonoring, that public, material and human resources were used for partisan purposes". In addition, she has considered that the mayor should "ask forgiveness from the people of Madrid for the show that he himself is giving and that his government team is allowing."
