From manipulating “crucial evidence” in the case to something that “has no importance.” The prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Salvador Viada, appeared this Tuesday as a witness for just over half an hour before the Supreme Court judge who is investigating the attorney general for revealing secrets. A statement that revolved around claims by Viada and his association of having seen Álvaro García Ortiz manipulate a mobile phone during Civil Guard searches last October. Today in the Supreme Court, forced to tell the truth, Viada has acknowledged that he does not know “what they were looking at, whose phone it was”, he has acknowledged that there were even civil guards in front of him and he has limited himself to making ugly that the attorney general was talking to the prosecutor of the case during a search: “A prosecutor doesn’t do that.”
This is a branch of the case opened following a letter in which the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors (APIF), chaired by Viada until a year ago, stated that they had testimony of a possible irregularity during the searches on the 30th. October: Álvaro García Ortiz had been seen speaking during the searches in the central courtyard of the Prosecutor’s Office, manipulating a mobile phone, when the UCO’s diligence focused precisely on intercepting his messages and emails on his electronic devices.
The APIF asked the judge to take action on the matter: they had been seen “checking a cell phone apparently belonging to the person under investigation” in a “singular and unusual encounter.” For the APIF, it is “inconceivable” that the prosecutor in the case “meets” with the person under investigation and “examines together” what it defined as “crucial evidence of the crime.” They requested the testimony of Viada, who witnessed the scene, and asked the judge to collect the images from the security cameras that recorded that patio.
The judge listened to the APIF and asked to preserve those images only to discover, a few hours later, that those security cameras do not even exist. He also verified that, as recorded in the minutes signed by the Chamber’s Administration of Justice Attorney, by the time that meeting occurred, the Central Operational Unit had already finished examining the attorney general’s telephone number. And finally he called prosecutor Viada to testify, who today has significantly reduced the suspicions posed by the association he represents on the Fiscal Council.
“The context caught my attention more than the fact itself. That has no importance, I can’t know what they were looking at, whose phone it was or any details like that,” he said at the doors of the Supreme Court where he works as a prosecutor. He has come to recognize that at that moment there were even Civil Guard agents in front: “The UCO are not idiots, when I see that I am thinking that they have returned their phone, this happens in front of the UCO agents. I don’t think they are deleting things, I think they are looking. I am sure that they have already returned the phone,” he said, a series of details that the popular accusation did not convey when it requested various proceedings in this regard.
After acknowledging that he does not attribute “any relevance” to what García Ortiz and his number two could be doing with a mobile phone, Viada has focused his criticism on the fact that the attorney general was speaking with the prosecutor in charge of the case. “A prosecutor does not do that, he does not talk to the person under investigation in the middle of the proceedings.”
New testimonies in January
The case being investigated by Judge Hurtado in the Supreme Court revolves around the publication last March of an email in which Alberto González Amador’s lawyer acknowledged having defrauded 350,000 euros in exchange for agreeing with the Prosecutor’s Office on a testimonial sentence. of jail that would allow him to avoid prison. The Supreme Court maintains both the attorney general and the provincial prosecutor of Madrid indicted pending a key procedure in the case: for the Civil Guard to finish analyzing the emails and messages that intervened in Álvaro García Ortiz’s phone and computer during records from the end of October.
The first witnesses to appear in these proceedings are not related to the main object of the case: the alleged leak of the emails by the Prosecutor’s Office. A few days before Salvador Viada appeared in the Supreme Court, Juan Lobato, former general secretary of the PSOE in Madrid, also testified as a witness to explain why he had that email on the morning of March 14, half an hour before the media published it. communication.
The judge, while awaiting a second report from the UCO on the material seized from the attorney general, has indicated several testimonies for next January. That of eight journalists from different media who published those emails or their content, but also that of Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, right-hand man of Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the Community of Madrid.
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