Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s decision that her ‘number 3’ in the Madrid PP, Ana Millán, ceased to be mayor to become a regional deputy and, consequently, be seated before the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM), has began to reveal itself as key in the future of the former councilor of Arroyomolinos. A judge from the aforementioned court, the conservative Juan José Goyena, has just issued an order in which he assures that none of the evidence collected by the Civil Guard since 2020 is even enough to open a case, despite the fact that the Navalcarnero magistrate at the head of the case detects four possible corruption crimes.
Judge Lidia Prado recused herself last June in favor of the TSJM. For four years, her court had investigated the collection of bribes by Ana Millán from a businessman who obtained more than 600,000 euros in contracts from the Department of Youth, which she directed, starting in 2008. The Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard concludes in several reports that both Millán and her sister and her current husband obtained compensation for the award of the aforementioned contracts, more than 200,000 euros in total.
When the investigation had not yet concluded, Ayuso decided that her friend Ana Millán would occupy a prominent position on the list for the regional elections of May 2023, which would ensure her a position as regional deputy and, automatically, the capacity. The court investigating her would have to get rid of the case. Despite being charged, Ayuso had appointed Ana Millán deputy secretary of Organization of the Madrid PP, number three. Once elected regional deputy, the former mayor of Arroyomolinos became vice president of the Madrid Assembly.
To get rid of the case, instead of issuing a reasoned statement, the Navalcarnero judge limited herself to issuing an order of inhibition in favor of the TSJM. The Prosecutor’s Office objected because it was not the procedure required by the case and because the procedures had not yet been exhausted, including taking a statement from Ana Millán’s husband, whom it had been impossible to locate to be summoned.
In an order dated the 4th, TSJM judge Juan José Goyena agrees with the Prosecutor’s Office. The magistrate orders the Navalcarnero judge to continue investigating and, once the investigations have concluded, to issue a reasoned statement – written in more detail than the restraining order – requesting the indictment of the accused. The TSJM’s decision was as expected as Judge Lidia Prado had already heard the Prosecutor’s appeal before her own court and had announced that she would prepare the reasoned statement.
“They do not involve criminal conduct”
But Goyena takes the opportunity to warn that the judge’s restraining order “is limited to pointing out a series of facts about the participation of the accused” and that such facts, “prima facie, do not simply imply criminal conduct.” Goyena’s order could have been limited to filing the open proceedings pending a reasoned presentation, but the judge decides to get to the bottom of the matter and thus warn that either the judge finds something else against Millán, or the UCO reports and the provisional conclusions of the Prosecutor’s Office will die on your table.
There is a paragraph in Goyena’s order that describes this. In it, the TSJM judge says that there is no “criminal conduct” in what he considers the local judge describes, that is, “giving approval to the Technical Prescription Documents and Necessary Reports in three files”; “request the extension and modification of three files”; “issue a letter proposing companies to invite to the contest, among which was one in particular”; or “give approval to the invoices prepared within the framework of the files processed from your Department”.
Along with Ana Millán, businessman Francisco Roselló is accused in the case, who stopped having contracts from the Arroyomolinos Youth Department when Millán moved to another department. Roselló was paying double the market price to rent a penthouse owned by Millán while receiving contracts from his Department. But, according to the TSJM judge, the Navalcarnero magistrate’s order “is not linked to an alleged criminal act in her capacity as a councilor.”
During the years of the awards, Roselló hired Millán’s sister and her husband, a night businessman who was working as a janitor in a contract for the accused businessman for a school. “Only the payments and the aforementioned family relationship are indicated, but not that they were a consequence of an alleged criminal act by the person under investigation,” says Goyena in this regard.
The Navalcarnero judge summarized in her order the conclusions reached in her report of conclusions by the UCO of the Civil Guard. The origin of the case is some emails that Millán’s collaborators were trying to destroy when they were surprised with three bags of garbage by the Government team, Ciudadanos, which replaced the PP in the Arroyomolinos Mayor’s Office in 2016.
The complaint filed with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office then ended up becoming an investigation in a local court four years later, once it was found that the allegedly criminal acts were not directly related to the Púnica case, as the complainants believed, and that they were not prescribed.
Judge Prado’s restraining order, says Goyena, does not even allow him to open an investigation. “It does not establish – continues the magistrate – a precise relationship, within what is the criminal investigation phase in which we would find ourselves, between a series of facts, which objectively do not show in themselves the nature of a crime and the obtaining of financial benefits. , for himself or for people in his family environment, or that constitute an act of influence peddling or alleged corruption in the exercise of his position.
Specifically, the Navalcarnero judge appreciated, according to the UCO investigations, that Millán and the businessman could have committed influence peddling, bribery, prevarication and unfair administration.
Now, the judge, if she does not back down, will have to express in more detail the evidence collected since 2020 – Millán has been charged since 2022 – and present the reasoned statement so that the TSJM can resolve. First, he must interrogate Millán’s husband and analyze some of the former councilor’s agendas that some witnesses provided when the case had already been sent to the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid.
Judge Juan José Goyena has recently participated in decisions that have attracted great media attention. It was his responsibility to report on Alberto González Amador’s complaint against the prosecutor in charge of the case of tax fraud and falsification of documents that affects Ayuso’s partner. In that case, Goyena admitted the complaint, faithfully reproducing the arguments of González Amador, and then proposed to the Supreme Court that it investigate the revelation of secrets, committed through a press release, to the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, and the chief prosecutor of Madrid, Pilar Rodríguez. Goyena was also a member of the court that rejected the President of the Government’s complaint against Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, who is investigating the case against Begoña Gómez.
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