The Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Madrid has requested the Investigative Court Number 9 of the capital to reconsider your decision not to investigate further the complaints presented by prosecutors Ignacio Stampa and José Grinda in the case opened against the former socialist militant Leire Díez. In a reform resource to which he has had access Europa Pressthe Public Ministry maintains that Díez “leads a continuous and coordinated criminal action” together with the businessman Javier Pérez Dolset and the journalist Pere Rusiñol, whose purpose would be to “discredit the heads of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office” to “annul or squander” their investigations in cases that affect relevant politicians and businessmen.
According to the prosecutor in charge of the appeal, Juan Pablo Nieto, the three defendants would have acted with a common pattern based on the exchange of favors and the search for compromised information on commands of the Civil Guard and the Prosecutor’s Office. “The pattern of action is exactly the same,” maintains the Public Ministry, which describes a modus operandi consisting of offering “procedural or professional favors” in exchange for irregular data that could compromise senior officials of both institutions.
The investigation, which is now in the hands of Judge Arturo Zamarriego, accumulates several complaints and witness statements, including prosecutors Stampa and Grinda, who each recounted bribery attempts linked to the same plot.
The prosecutor Ignacio Stampa reported in a letter sent to the superior prosecutor of Madrid, Almudena Lastra, that last May he held a meeting with Leire Díez and the businessman Pérez Dolset, who recorded in full. During the meeting, both would have asked him if he knew of irregularities related to the Anticorruption prosecutors Alejandro Luzón and José Grinda, as well as the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón.
According to Stampa, the interlocutors assured act “following orders from the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez”and they hinted that the Executive would be interested in reversing the judicial situation resulting from the accusation of Begoña Gómez. Pérez Dolset would have gone so far as to affirm, according to the prosecutor’s account, that “the president had given an order to limit, without limit,” and that it was necessary to “reverse the situation no matter who falls.”
During the conversation, those investigated also mentioned the State Attorney General, Alvaro Garcia Ortizto the Minister of Justice, Felix Bolañosand to the then Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdan —currently in preventive detention for a case of alleged bites in public works—, who was supposedly going to attend the appointment on behalf of the Government, something that ultimately did not happen.
Stampa pointed out that, after the meeting, he had another telephone conversation with Leire Díez in which she promised him that “the disputes with the administration would be resolved” and that measures would be adopted so that she would take up the ‘Tandem Case’ again. Days later, Pérez Dolset tried to make a new appointment on May 29, but the prosecutor canceled it when the information about Díez became publicly known. It was then that he decided to transfer everything that happened to the Superior Prosecutor’s Office in Madrid.
At the same time, Anti-Corruption prosecutor José Grinda informed his superior, Alejandro Luzón, that on February 27 he had met with journalist Pere Rusiñol, who showed him a document—without allowing him to keep it or photograph it—in which he was offered a transfer and a promotion in exchange for collaborating in filing certain cases and providing compromising information about Luzon.
In that meeting, Rusiñol would have told him that “the person who could endorse this agreement is someone he knows as Leire,” which, in the opinion of the Prosecutor’s Office, reinforces the connection between the three investigated.
Judge Zamarriego has summoned prosecutors to testify as witnesses Stampa and Grinda next November 5while Leire Díez, Pérez Dolset and Pere Rusiñol They must appear as investigated day 11 of the same month. The case also includes complaints from the Hazte Oír association, which sent a file originating in Badajoz to the Madrid courts after learning of a series of audios in which Díez offered favors to businessman Alejandro Hamlym in exchange for information that compromised members of the UCO and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.
The Public Ministry insists that the actions must be analyzed jointly to understand the “coordinated criminal plan” that, according to its version, sought to “manipulate heterogeneous lawsuits” that affected both politicians and businessmen. “The three would collaborate in a criminal plan united by coincidence and the need to denigrate the two aforementioned institutions,” says prosecutor Nieto in his writing.
The judicial investigation continues its course in the Investigative Court Number 9 of Madrid, where Judge Zamarriego has assumed the investigation of all the accumulated pieces related to the alleged crimes of bribery and influence peddling attributed to the former socialist militant.
