Justice sees no reason to open an investigation with the aim of verifying whether the judge Juan Carlos Peinado He prevaricated by summoning the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to the Moncloa, when the law allows him to declare in writing.
The State Attorney’s Office had filed a complaint, on behalf of the President of the Government, for an alleged crime of prevarication against the magistrate investigating the case against Begoña Gómezbut The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) has unanimously rejected studying it.
Last week, the Madrid high court also did not accept a complaint filed by Maximum Prairie. On that occasion, he also considered that there was not enough evidence to open an investigation into Peinado for an alleged crime of revealing secrets. It was thus aligned with the theses of the Prosecutor’s Office, which this Monday announced that rejected the complaint presented by Gómez herself.
Third setback for Sánchez and Gómez
“Conceiving as an unnecessary attack on the actions of the Government the summoning of its president as a witness in a criminal case lacks the most basic justification,” reads the order, critical of the position of the State Attorney’s Office.
Jesus Maria Santos has issued a dissenting vote, which does not change the meaning of the decision, in which it considers that the complaint involves an “abusive exercise of the right to complain.”
It also alludes to procedural “bad faith” and charges against the State Attorney’s Office for the “unreasonableness of its complaint” and “the exorbitant nature and contrary to procedural good faith.” The other two magistrates of the TSJM have also been firm in rejecting it.
Santos believes that, apart from rejecting the complaint, the Superior Court of Madrid should have opened a separate case to determine whether it involved “procedural bad faith” and whether, consequently, it was appropriate to impose a fine that to the State Attorney’s Office that “could range between 180 and 6,000 euros.”
“Speculative nature”
The TSJM considers that the complaint has a “speculative nature” and blames Pedro Sánchez for an “attempt to distort” the crime of prevarication, while at the same time criticizing him for having used the State Attorney’s Office to take legal action against the holder of the Court of Instruction Number 41 of Madrid.
He also understands that the President of the Government is not part of the procedure led by Peinado, because he appears as a witness in the case. Additionally, consider that using the State Attorney to file a complaint is “extravagant.”
The Superior Court of Madrid makes it clear that the investigating judge did not want to question Sánchez “about his actions as an institution, but rather the defendant’s husband, for what he could have known on this personal level.”
The complaint of the State Attorney’s Office
The State Attorney defended that there were “multiple elements” that made it “evident” that the decision to take Sánchez’s statement as a witness in person at the Moncloa was contrary to the law, because it stripped the president of one of the “guarantees that offers the Criminal Procedure Law”.
In the complaint, the State’s legal services assured that Sánchez had to have appeared in writing in his capacity as head of the Executive, considering that this is what the law establishes for cases in which a statement is taken from him for facts of which he had knowledge due to his position as president.
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