The National Court once again imputes the former Madrid councilor Lucía Figar for the Punic plot

The National Court has once again imputed in the Punic case to Lucía Figar (PP), Minister of Education of the Community of Madrid during the governments of Esperanza Aguirre and Ignacio González. At the request of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, the Criminal Chamber has corrected the investigating judge Manuel García-Castellón, who filed the case against the former leader of the PP in October, who has been investigated since 2015 for his alleged participation in the corrupt plot hatched in the institutions run by the party. The court considers, as the public prosecutor maintained, that Figar was challenged in the line of investigations focused on the irregular financing of the popular Madrid (Piece 9), when she was really under suspicion in Piece 10, where the payment with public funds to one of the companies in the plot for reputation work on-line.

In addition to Figar, the Criminal Chamber has once again charged three other former high-ranking officials of the PP: Pablo Balbín, former head of Press for the Ministry of Education; Manuel Pérez, former Vice Minister of Education; and Luis Sánchez, former director of the Madrid+D Foundation for Knowledge. However, the National Court refuses to do the same with Salvador Victoria, former Minister of the Presidency, whom the Prosecutor’s Office does place in Room 9 and whom it asked to prosecute, considering that there are indications that he was “knowledgeable, beneficiary and promoter” of the contracts with Alejandro de Pedro, the computer scientist who was paid with public funds to do reputation work on the internet for party positions. A request that García-Castellón rejected.

This battle began last October, when the investigating judge of Púnica proposed to send only eight of the defendants to the bench in the line of investigation focused on the irregular financing of the PP in Madrid, limiting maximum responsibility for the plot to Francisco Granados and Beltrán Gutiérrez, former general secretary and former manager of the formation respectively. The judge then left a total of 71 people out of the case: among them, Esperanza Aguirre and Ignacio González, former presidents of the Community of Madrid.

In its appeal, the Prosecutor’s Office explained that Figar, Balbín, Sánchez and Pérez were not accused in Part 9 of the summary, but in Part 10, in which part of the work is being investigated. on-line provided by De Pedro —focuses on those concerning the municipalities of Madrid, Valencia, Denia, Gandía, Castellón, Valdemoro, Coslada, Alcobendas, Majadahonda, and those that occurred in the Ministry of Education of the Community of Madrid and in third Ibero-American countries —. In addition, the public ministry alleged that there are sufficient evidence against these four former senior officials. They promoted, authorized and “split contracts” to grant them to the computer scientist, exposed Anti-Corruption, which again pointed out Figar, very close to Esperanza Aguirre, as the great beneficiary.