The judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz has rejected the complaint filed by the PP against the PSOE for alleged illegal financing. In an order, dated this Monday, October 21, the magistrate states that in the case regarding fraud in the payment of hydrocarbon taxes in the framework of which Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party asked to investigate the PSOE “there does not appear any connection with what was reported” and warns of the “contradictions of the anonymous complainants” on which the complaint was based.
The document presented by PP did not provide any evidence other than anonymous testimonies that claimed to have delivered bags of money to the socialists’ headquarters in Ferraz. The complaint also did not identify those making these accusations and did not add any further evidence, testimony or document.
In the leadership of the PP they said they were aware last week that the jurisprudence indicates that the complaint would be rejected for not providing any evidence, but they considered that the objective had been achieved, since it was to focus on the alleged bags full of money that businessmen They led to the socialist headquarters of Ferraz.
In his order, Pedraz points out that in order to admit the complaint, it must be analyzed whether the data offered anonymously in the journalistic information that is invoked has sufficient virtuality to initiate the investigation.
These anonymous testimonies come from a news story in The Objective, where two people anonymously report that the ringleader of the Koldo case, businessman Víctor de Aldama, had acted as an intermediary with a businessman in the hydrocarbons sector so that he could obtain a license to your company. That businessman, named Claudio Rivas, would have paid Aldama 600,000 euros in exchange.
The magistrate recalls that an anonymous complaint is fully valid to initiate an investigation, as long as the information is supported by corroborating data, or that it is the same that functions as a confirming element for others, without the need to reveal the identity of the informant, as is as established by the Supreme Court.
Jurisprudence, explains the instructor, requires that this information be supported by some data, fact or circumstance of knowledge that serves to delimit a typical behavior and its attribution to the accused person. Furthermore, he adds that jurisprudence indicates that “in general, a piece of news alone does not legitimize any popular actor to convert the journalistic story into a story of punishable acts that trigger criminal proceedings. Something more is needed.”
For Pedraz, in the case of the PP complaint, that “something more” as follows from reading what was reported in the complaint does not occur, since from what has been done to date in the present case there does not appear any connection with what denounced.
Even, the magistrate warns, “contradictions appear from the anonymous complainants.” These “contradictions” are related to the processing of that license that would have motivated the alleged payment of the bribe. Thus, the judge points out that its processing corresponds to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and not to the director of the cabinet of the Minister of Industry. And it also points to the existence of a report that “also contradicts said complainants.”
The inadmissible PP complaint was directed, in addition to the PSOE, against businessmen Víctor de Aldama, his partner Claudio Rivas and against Koldo García, former advisor to former minister José Luis Ábalos, for alleged crimes of money laundering, bribery, influence peddling and financing. illegal.
Pedraz keeps Aldama in prison
In another order, the magistrate has agreed to keep Aldama in unconditional prison in this same procedure to prevent him from obstructing the action of justice. The judge recalls that multiple proceedings have been agreed upon that are still pending and that everything found in the records remains to be analyzed.
He adds that a significant part of what was defrauded, almost 74 million euros, could have been transferred to accounts abroad, so it is necessary to locate and block them, as well as determine the laundering operations allegedly carried out. These are measures that, in the judge’s opinion, “would be frustrated or, at least, made difficult, if the person under investigation were free.”
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