Clean Hands, which was on the verge of disappearing in 2016 when the investigation into the alleged coercion of banks was uncovered in which its maximum (and only) leader was later acquitted, has risen from its ashes in a surprising way with a poor complaint of eight pages against the wife of the President of the Government Pedro Sánchez, full of press clippings. Miguel Bernard Remón, a prosecutor by profession, at 82 years old, has gone from the ostracism of prison to the front pages of newspapers, once again doing the only thing for which he is known: appearing in court to file complaints.
But what is Clean Hands today? Although this organization is formally a union, the reality is far from its statutes. Although they claim to have 6,000 members, the truth is that there is no evidence that Clean Hands is present on any committee. According to all the sources consulted, ML had basically been reduced to Bernard and a very small inner circle, who are the ones who help him defray the attorney's expenses, because currently not even this group has a lawyer on the payroll.
Bernard Remón is a former lawyer for the Madrid City Council and a well-known former fascist leader who held positions of high responsibility in the Fuerza Nueva party when its leader was Blas Piñar. And although he denies the political labels placed on his union, Bernard himself stood for the National Front in the 1987 and 1989 European Parliament elections.
Two hundred lawsuits
Since its creation in 1995, it has filed nearly more than two hundred lawsuits of all kinds, but very few have been successful. His first great success was the complaint filed against the former president of the Basque Parliament Juan María Atutxa, who after many vicissitudes was condemned by the Supreme Court for his refusal to dissolve the Sozialista Abartzaleak parliamentary group after the outlawing of Batasuna.
But without a doubt, his stellar performance was the 'Nóos Case'. There, as the only private accusation, the pseudo-syndicate, which at first even had the connivance of the Prosecutor's Office, managed to put Cristina de Borbón in the dock for supposedly having benefited from the irregular businesses of Iñaki Urdangarin.
But that maneuver, which initially had the blessing of the investigating judge and the Provincial Court of Palma, ended abruptly before the case was sentenced. In April 2016, Bernard was arrested in an operation by the National Police regarding alleged extortion by the union in exchange for not denouncing entities.
Until December of that year, the retired septuagenarian was not released on bail. But in the end, those accusations, which even made Clean Hands stop accusing Felipe VI's sister before the ruling, came to nothing. Last March, the Supreme Court acquitted Bernad and the leader of the Association of Banking Services Users (Ausbanc), Luis Pineda, who had been sentenced to 8 and 4 years in prison, respectively, by the National Court for extortion of banking entities. change to avoid legal actions or smear campaigns. Contrary to the criteria of the first instance magistrates, the Supreme Court ruled that the “pressure” used was not sufficient to be considered “intimidation”, despite the fact that they could be “censorable at the level of ethical assessment.” After hearing the Supreme Court's ruling, the union announced criminal and administrative actions to repair the damage and will request “million-dollar compensation” from BBVA, which initiated the process, and from the State.
In recent months, before the acquittal, Clean Hands had returned vigorously to the lawsuits, although with little success, as almost always. Three weeks ago the Supreme Court rejected a complaint against Sánchez for the investiture agreement signed on November 9 between the PSOE and Junts; In January the Supreme Court shelved another complaint by Clean Hands against the former Minister of Equality Irene Montero for her criticism of the judges for the application of the law of only yes is yes. In December 2023, the Prosecutor's Office filed another lawsuit against Santos Cerdán, Jordi Turull and Gabriel Rufián for talking about lawfare.
Files and scandals
Although at some point the union estimated its judicial successes at 30%, the truth is that the newspaper archive is full of files and scandals like these most recent ones.
The Supreme Court rejected his complaint against the President of the Government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and against the Basque socialist leaders for meeting with Arnaldo Otegi and other Batasuna leaders. Within its constant, almost promiscuous, exercise of private or popular accusation, the same high court ended up ordering a court in Madrid to open proceedings against the union to verify whether there was bad faith or criminal violations in the complaint it filed against the union. instructor of the 11-M case, Juan del Olmo, and which was dismissed outright. ML, who in the context of the Madrid attacks also filed a complaint against Baltasar Garzón or against the prosecutor Olga Sánchez, has also been accused in the ERE case.
He appeared in the 8-M case due to the alleged spread of the pandemic in the demonstration, he denounced Pablo Iglesias and Íñigo Errejón for “criminal organization” based on false reports of the police dirty war…
The union has never claimed to be a workers' defense organization. On its own website, the group states that its main objective is to “file all types of complaints against political or economic corruption that harms the public or general interest.”
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