Almudena Lastra, head of the Prosecutor’s Office in Madrid, appeared this Thursday in the Supreme Court to expose her suspicions that the leak of Alberto González Amador’s confession came from the Public Ministry. In his appearance, according to sources in the case, Lastra revealed that he directly asked the attorney general if he had been the one who had leaked the email from Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner: “That is not important now,” he said Álvaro replied. Garcia Ortiz. Julián Salto, the prosecutor who investigated and denounced the businessman, has accused Alberto González Amador’s first lawyer of leaking, for his part, a confidential email from the Prosecutor’s Office.
The two have reiterated before Judge Ángel Hurtado the story that they already explained when the case was being processed before the Superior Court of Madrid: that on the night of March 13, the Attorney General’s Office demanded that they account for the mail crossing that the prosecutor had maintained. Julián Salto with Alberto González Amador’s lawyer. The reason, both have reiterated, is that that night several media outlets were publishing biased or outright false information about the case and the actions of the Prosecutor’s Office.
Lastra has verbalized several times his anger at that time both with the data leaks of the case and with the statement that was finally issued on the morning of March 14. He argued several times with several people from the Attorney General’s Office to the point of directly asking Álvaro García Ortiz if he had leaked that email: “That is not important now,” he said he replied.
Julián Salto has also reiterated his version of the events and has told how he had to manage those emails to send them to the Attorney General’s Office in the middle of a soccer match. The prosecutor has echoed the statement of Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, who acknowledged that he had one of the emails in the case, signed by Salto himself, from the hands of Alberto González Amador’s lawyer and that he distributed it, with the permission of the businessman, to various media outlets. Salto, before the Supreme Court, has accused that lawyer of having failed in his duty of confidentiality.
The prosecutor who denounced Alberto González
Julián Salto is the prosecutor specializing in economic crimes who led the investigation against Alberto González Amador and denounced both the businessman and several of his partners and their companies. He was the recipient of the email that, in February 2024, the lawyer for Ayuso’s partner sent to confess his tax crimes and propose an agreement. A month later, prosecutor Salto returned the communication, sending the complaint they had filed and reminding that the pact, if it was still on the table, was a viable option.
The member of the Public Ministry already declared as a defendant before the Superior Court of Madrid, when the case was not yet directed against the attorney general and when what was being analyzed was the statement with which the Prosecutor’s Office sought to deny information from El Mundo that gave a distorted version of those communications. He then explained that that night of March 13 he was watching a soccer game when he received a call from Pilar Rodríguez, provincial prosecutor of Madrid, asking for the emails he had exchanged with González Amador’s defense.
The version that he confirmed today as a witness indicated that he limited himself to complying with his statutory obligation to inform his superiors about an ongoing investigation, denying having participated in any leak to the media. He also confirmed then that the information published by different media and disseminated by Miguel Ángel Rodríguez himself was false: the agreement proposal was from Ayuso’s partner, not from the Prosecutor’s Office, and in no case had it been withdrawn by “orders from above.” .
Almudena Lastra is chief prosecutor of Madrid, Salto’s hierarchical superior in the Prosecutor’s Office who, finally, issued a statement on the morning of March 14 to deny this information after requesting all the emails. The former member of the Council of the Judiciary already testified as a witness before the Superior Court and evidenced the confrontation with the attorney general’s office over the management of the information crisis those days: she stated that she never agreed with the content of that statement, that she became angry because of it. the leaks and that the attorney general had ordered their publication.
In his appearance, Lastra also criticized that that night the first leak had been an email from one of his prosecutors, Julián Salto, addressed to González Amador’s defense.
The case against the attorney general
The proceedings that the Supreme Court has been carrying out since mid-October against the attorney general and the provincial prosecutor of Madrid for the alleged leak of Alberto González Amador’s confession have gained new momentum in recent weeks at the hands of Judge Ángel Hurtado. The magistrate has called Álvaro García Ortiz himself to testify on January 29 and has expanded the accusations to Diego Villafañe, lieutenant prosecutor of the Technical Secretariat, one of his closest collaborators in the Public Ministry.
The instructor is convinced that the three accused prosecutors devised a strategy to leak and disseminate confidential data from the tax fraud case of Alberto González Amador to harm the president of the Community of Madrid. In his latest summons, the judge even echoes the information provided by Juan Lobato, former general secretary of the PSOE in the capital, and extends to Moncloa the suspicions of having participated in this strategy with a leak from the Prosecutor’s Office.
The judge is based, above all, on the reports of the Central Operational Unit that have analyzed the messages that Pilar Rodríguez, provincial prosecutor of Madrid, exchanged between March 12 and 14 with colleagues and superiors in the Public Ministry, among them the attorney general. Messages that the attorney general deleted shortly after the opening of the case when he changed telephone numbers and that did not provide conclusive data on whether any of the defendants leaked or gave the order to filter that email.
The magistrate has also taken statements from eight journalists, two of whom stated that they had access to that email before the attorney general obtained it from Julián Salto. These testimonies, according to the judge, are insufficient to distort the evidence that, he considers, he has against Álvaro García Ortiz to consider him most responsible for the leak.
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