The PP charges against the policeman who uncovered the Gürtel and asks the judge not to take into account his latest report
The Popular Party has accused Gürtel's main investigator, Inspector Manuel Morocho, of "malpractice" for contributing to the judge of the National Court who is investigating the finalist awards to the party in exchange for black money during the government of José María Aznar, a report that the formation considers plagued with "subjective assessments" and unrelated to that cause, for which it has asked the magistrate Santiago Pedraz to expel that dossier from the judicial procedure, reports Europa Press.
Bárcenas hides behind the theft of documents in Kitchen so as not to provide new evidence of box B of the PP
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The document, which analyzes the content of the statements made in 2019 and 2020 by Enrique García Castaño, former head of the Central Operational Support Unit (UCAO), for another matter, 'Operation Kitchen', describes a dynamic on three levels - party, executive power and police structure - through which the alleged parapolice espionage to Bárcenas would have been carried out to steal the compromising documentation that the ex-treasurer of the PP might have and thus "deactivate" the Gürtel case.
"We are facing a police report that incurs in a manifest 'malpractice' of its author, who 'de facto' has made a clear attack against the guiding principles that, according to our Law of Criminal Rites, must govern the preparation of reports police ", says the lawyer of the PP, Jesús Santos, in the letter. And this because, according to the defense of Pablo Casado's party, the inspector would have sent this report to Pedraz without the instructor requesting it, which he criticizes as an "unprecedented and reprehensible proactivity" by Morocho.
It also adds that "through this report subjective assessments are incorporated [...] with which it is intended to supply the exclusive assessment work of the investigating judge, "attributing to Morocho" a clear incriminating bias "that would have pushed him to search" desperately "for evidence unrelated to the investigation led by Pedraz." He has had no qualms about squandering the scarce public resources available to the Judicial Police, which, far from being used to try to clarify the material truth of the facts under investigation in these proceedings, have devoted themselves to preparing a report for spurious purposes ", emphasizes the Popular Party.
For this reason, it demands that the magistrate, in addition to expelling this latest report from the case, "expressly" warn Morocho "so that, henceforth, he refrains from submitting unsolicited reports totally unrelated to the purpose of the investigation" .
More than a decade
The PP emphasizes that the content of the report is not relevant to this case, recalling that "during all this time" it has not been considered necessary to question García Castaño, neither as investigated nor as a witness, in this case, and reasoning that, consequently, a document that analyzes his statements about 'Operation Kitchen' "suffers from the same lack of utility."
It also warns that with this dossier, which - it insists - "does not have any connection, either objective or subjective" with the investigation on the so-called finalist commissions, "'veiled' the UDEF intends to expand the facts to which it is circumscribed this instruction ", warning that doing so would be" a disproportionate and unjustified decision "that would transform the case into" a prospective investigation "," totally "prohibited in Spanish law.
Instruction finished
The PP's request comes after Pedraz agreed on July 22 not to extend the investigations into Bárcenas' 'papers', thus leaving it to end days later, on July 29, in accordance with the new legal deadlines. The magistrate must decide whether to issue an indictment or to file it.
The investigation into the finalist commissions began in 2013 with the then judge of the National Court Pablo Ruz, who shelved it two years later when finding only indications that the reform of the headquarters of the PP in Madrid's Genova street would have been paid with the ' box b '. However, the case was reopened after the revelations made by the leader of the 'Gürtel', Francisco Correa, during the trial for the first period of activities of the corrupt plot.
Later, Bárcenas, who in that same trial denied that the donations that different businessmen made to the PP were finalist, affirmed in a letter sent at the beginning of the year to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office that they were pursuing awards. And, in a recent statement on July 16, the former treasurer implicated all the Ministers of Environment and Development of the PP in these alleged corruption.
