After more than a year of investigation and while the oral trial is now open before the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, the defense of the former minister and former number three of the PSOE Jose Luis Abalos requested that the abbreviated proceedings against him be transformed into a court proceeding with a jury for that nine legal citizens judge himchaired by a member of the Criminal Chamber.
Ábalos, who is still indicted before the Criminal Chamber of the TS for maintaining his record as a deputy (although he is suspended from his functions after entering prison on November 27), faces a request for a sentence of 24 years in prison by the anti-corruption prosecution and of 30 years for the PPwho leads the popular accusations.
The former minister will be tried for allegedly profiting from the awarding of mask contracts to the company SL Management Solutionsfor which Victor de Aldama acted as a pimp, as well as for the efforts made and the influences deployed to further the interests of this businessman or of companies linked to him, such as Air Europa.
The indictments also refer to the hiring in state-owned companies of Jessica Rodriguez And Claudia Montéswomen linked to Ábalos, without the first of them going to work a single day.
If the case proceeds to a jury trial, the trial the Criminal Division plans to hold at the end of February or beginning of March would be delayed. And this when two of the three accused – Ábalos and Koldo Garcia– are deprived of their liberty.
The defense request, formulated by the former prosecutor of the National Court Carlos Bautista, would imply the annulment of the resolution by which the investigation was concluded as well as the resolution by which it was agreed to open an oral trial, for return to initial procedures of the procedure before the Jury.
These procedures include an appearance for discovery of the accusation, a preliminary hearing to discuss the opening of the trial, the presentation of prosecution and defense briefs and the selection of jurors, all without taking into account the intention to request a new investigative procedure.
Any precedents?
There has never been a jury trial in the Supreme Court. The defense does not address in its motion the question of whether the reservation of jurisdiction that the Constitution establishes – notably before the Criminal Chamber – would or would not prevent the jurisdiction of the Jury and ensures that “there are precedents: the so-called Camps affair”.
These are the proceedings initiated against the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana Francisco Camps in the so-called suitcase by a Jury constituted at the Superior Court of Justice of Valencia.
The investigation into the giving of several prosecutions to Camps for the Gürtel plot was referred by the National Court to the TSJ of Valencia, which recognized its jurisdiction. The instructor of the Civil and Criminal Chamber agreed on May 29, 2009 to declare the procedure closed and to continue the case through the procedural stages before the Court with Jury. Camps was ultimately acquitted.
This case It is not comparable to that of Ábalos. Not only because the competence of regional presidents is not protected by the Constitution, but above all because Camps was tried for a single crime, corruption, which unequivocally falls within the jurisdiction of the Jury.
In Ábalos’ case, three of the seven crimes he is charged with – ongoing corruption, influence peddling and embezzlement – are among the crimes being assessed that fall within the jurisdiction of the jury. But integration into a criminal organization is not use of privileged information, falsification of official documents and prevarication.
The defense brief argues that the first three constitute the “core crimes” and states, incorrectly, that “there are only two crimes in the indictment that are not known to the jury, namely criminal organization and use of privileged information.”
Defense ignores that the PP’s indictment includes document falsification and prevarication (no jurisdiction of the Jury) and that the investigating judge, Leopoldo Puente, also opened an oral trial for these alleged crimes, in addition to the five others.
The motion invokes the non-jurisdiction agreements adopted by the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court in 2010, according to which the Jury’s jurisdiction must be extended to related offenses whenever there is a functional relationship with the offenses that fall within the Jury’s jurisdiction (whether the related offenses were committed to facilitate them or to ensure their impunity).
He maintains, in this regard, that the alleged criminal organization “was developed for the commission of crimes within the jurisdiction of the jury court (embezzlement, corruption and influence peddling), so that the jurisdiction to prosecute the crime of criminal organization is absorbed.”
Likewise, he argues that “the crime of inside information is so intertwined in the factual narrative of the charges with the offenses within the jurisdiction of the jury court, that the continence of the case would be broken if tried separately.”
Procrastination
However, the defense does not address the obstacle posed to its case by the provision of the jury law, according to which ““In no case can the offense of prevarication be prosecuted through nexus.”which also does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Jury as a crime major.
The People’s Actions indictment alleges that the awarding of contracts for the provision of medical supplies by entities under the Ministry of Transportation in favor of Management Solutions was a prevaricatory act. The alleged administrative malpractice is linked to the rest of the crimes and could not be the subject of separate prosecutions.
The sources of the accusations also question whether the alleged crimes of corruption, embezzlement and influence peddling are the main ones. According to him, the the fundamental crime is criminal organizationwho was allegedly created to commit the rest of the crimes.
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