This Tuesday, the Supreme Court pronounced the sentence against Álvaro García Ortiz, who was state attorney general. In a 184-page resolution, the majority of the court sets out its arguments to sentence him to “special disqualification from the position of Attorney General of the State for a period of two years”, a fine of 7,200 euros and payment of costs (including those of the private trial brought by Alberto González Amador, boyfriend of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid). In addition to the judgment, the High Court notified the dissenting opinion signed by the two dissenting judges, who defended the acquittal. Here are nine keys to the sentence:
19 days of waiting. García Ortiz had to wait 19 days to find out why he was sentenced. To avoid leaks, the Supreme Court advanced the meaning of its judgment on November 20, but announced that the judgment was still “awaiting drafting”. This Tuesday, the resolution was finally published.
The mail leak. One of the big questions that has hovered throughout the process is who leaked to the press an email sent by González Amador’s lawyer to the prosecutor’s office – in which a deal was proposed to avoid the imprisonment of Ayuso’s boyfriend in exchange for admitting to two tax crimes. During the hearing, no direct evidence was presented that would make García Ortiz the material author of the dissemination of this document on the night of March 13, 2014. And, in fact, the sentence does not specify who facilitated this document. e-mail to Cadena SER (the first media that offered literal quotation marks for its content). However, the majority of the court affirms that the Attorney General is behind this maneuver: “The email was communicated from the Office of the Attorney General of the State, with direct intervention or through a third party, but with the full knowledge or acceptance of Mr. García Ortiz.
In the absence of direct evidence, the court relies on a “convergence of accredited evidence” which “allows the construction of a solid, coherent and conclusive evidentiary framework” against García Ortiz.
The magistrates assume that the Cadena SER journalist who provided the information, Miguel Ángel Campos, “maintained communication” with the state attorney general on the night of March 13 – an assertion that both denied. “The defense claims that many people were able to access the contents of the e-mail. However, what has been confirmed is that only a small number of people appear, all close to the accused, who knew that González Amador was involved in the complaint investigated”, retorts the court.
On the fact that hundreds of people were able to discover the e-mail —as it was uploaded to various electronic tools of the Prosecutor’s Office and the courts— and, therefore, the scope of leaks widens, the judges exclude this route alleged by the defense. The magistrates conclude that this is an “insinuation” without “minimum proof”: “This is a serious accusation which would reveal an abnormal functioning of a public service, not in compliance with the continuous invocations of data protection, as a guiding criterion for proceeding with the deletion of data hosted on the terminals, and the proper functioning of the service, which we know is provided. »
The press release. Beyond the filtration of e-mailthe accusations also related to the press release published on the morning of March 14, 2024 by the prosecution, which denied the distorted information on The world (which claimed that the Public Ministry had offered a deal to González Amador, when in reality it was the opposite) and a hoax propagated by Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Ayuso’s chief of staff (who claimed that this supposed offer had been withdrawn as a kind of political blackmail). At the opening of the trial against the then Attorney General, the Supreme Court declared that this press release “apparently” did not contain any “unduly revealed” information, since all the data had already been published by the press. Now, the court clarifies and affirms that it reflects “data which should not have been disclosed because of its impact on the rights framed in the right to due process”.
The majority of the court considers that González Amador’s compliance agreement represents an “acknowledgement of the facts”. “If an agreement is not reached, its disclosure could undermine their right to defense and the presumption of innocence that the public prosecutor must guarantee,” adds the judgment.
The judges affirm that the “urgency of the action” of the attorney general to deny the deception of Rodríguez and the distorted information of The world; and they add that “the manner and time space” in which he requested the emails are against him. “The emails were not necessary to publicly deny that he had given orders so that no agreement would be reached in the González Amador case,” the court said.
“The disclosure (of reserved data) materializes both by the leak of the email and by the publication of the information note, which in reality constitutes a unit of action. The note consolidates the leak initiated by the email, in reality it ‘officializes’ it,” adds the judgment. Regarding the disclosure of confidential data, he continues: “The duty of confidentiality of the Attorney General of the State does not disappear because the information of which he is aware due to his function has already been the subject of public treatment (…) García Ortiz had a reinforced duty of confidentiality which he broke without justification.”
The testimony of journalists. During the trial, half a dozen journalists assured the court that they had access to the contents of the email disclosed (in whole or in part) to the attorney general. Three of them said that they even mastered the literality of the e-mail. José Precedo, of elDiario, He said he had a hard copy from a week ago. And Miguel Ángel Campos, of Cadena SER and the first journalist to reproduce quotes from the document, said he had been able to see, read and copy it six hours before. The judgment explicitly contradicts the version of Campos, who denied that his source was García Ortiz. And, regarding the rest of the informants (from elDiario and EL PAÍS) who said the same thing, the judgment “does not question the veracity of their statements” and affirms that they were able to access the email through another source.
The journalists of elDiarioCadena SER and EL PAÍS insisted that the Attorney General was not their source and invoked their constitutional right not to reveal who provided them with the information. At this stage, the court emphasizes that Spanish law considers “journalistic secrecy” as “only a right”: “without implying a corresponding obligation”. “The duty of the journalist to maintain the confidentiality of his sources lacks a normative level and is on a moral and ethical level,” underlines the judgment.
And the magistrates then launched a direct reproach at certain journalists: “Some of the witnesses, after having weighed the matter beforehand, had no problem waiving their right on certain points and suggesting data on the official – but not private – state of the source and its physical location in an unidentified, but suggested, building. » Campos said that on the afternoon of March 13 he went to the third floor of a building to see the leaked mail – the headquarters of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Community of Madrid, headed by Almudena Lastra, in conflict with García Ortiz, is located on the third floor.
Approval of files. The Supreme Court also supports the searches carried out in the offices of García Ortiz and the provincial prosecutor of Madrid, Pilar Rodríguez, which the prosecutor’s office and the prosecution considered abusive. They reported that the Civil Guard canceled and copied the content of the last eight months that they kept on their electronic devices, despite the fact that the events investigated were limited to 48 hours. The High Court emphasizes that it could not be otherwise: “The evidence during the oral trial showed that a selective seizure within a few hours was not feasible. As is always the case when a procedure of this type is agreed, the entire contents of the device must be copied.”
“Only then can the necessary work be carried out to examine exclusively the limited period or the files useful for the investigation. But to collect the communications between March 8 and the date of the copy, a total copy was inevitable,” continues the opinion of the High Court. The defense sought to annul the minutes in order to exclude from the proceedings all the reports that the Civil Guard subsequently prepared and which pointed against García Ortiz.
“Erasing”. The court is looking into the deletion of mobile messages carried out by García Ortiz on October 16, 2024, the day he was informed of the opening of the case against him. During the trial, the attorney general explained that he removed them periodically. The court, while affirming that this action cannot “be considered decisive for evidentiary purposes”, grants it “probative relevance”. Thus, after evaluating it in context, it emphasizes: “The Chamber concludes that the explanatory cause of the deletion cannot be other than the strategic destruction of all information that could compromise the exonerating thesis asserted, with complete legitimacy, by Mr. García Ortiz. »
Lastra support. One of the most famous testimonies in the trial regarding the accusations was that of Almudena Lastra, who said she suspected García Ortiz and even reprimanded him in a phone call. To counter its version, the defense alleged that the Madrid Attorney General was in conflict with the management of the State Attorney General’s Office. A thesis that the Supreme Court does not accept: “She seems neither reluctant nor resentful about her situation or the treatment she suffered within the tax department. Rather, what it shows is that, loyal to her superior, she alerted him to what was happening (about Rodríguez’s hoax) and agreed with him on how to proceed. between the lawyer and the prosecutor to achieve possible compliance.
Pat García Ortiz on the back. According to the judgment, the court takes into account the prosecutor’s career to set the fine at the “minimum possible”: “We are judging a concrete fact, and not a career in a career closely linked to the administration of justice, whose brilliance and dedication we cannot fail to notice and which we cannot fail to take into consideration.”
Setback for González Amador. The court denies that the broadcast of e-mail infringed on Ayuso’s boyfriend’s right to defense in his tax fraud case, as his lawyer argued (thus seeking to quash the proceedings against him). “It is hasty and unfounded to give the impression that the judges called upon to resolve this criminal case will not be able to professionally and legally resolve the accusations, if any, articulated. It must be presumed that they will be fully aware of the impossibility of using this poorly disseminated message as evidence in the process,” says the Supreme Court ruling.
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