The magistrate follows the Anticorruption criteria, which reported that the National Court was not competent in these events
MADRID, 10 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The judge of the National Court, Joaquín Gadea, has filed the preliminary proceedings initiated as a result of the complaint filed by the former CEO of the extinct Banca Privada de Andorra (BPA) Joan Pau Miquel against the former Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Díaz and several police officers for his alleged involvement in ‘Operation Catalonia’.
Legal sources have explained to Europa Press that the reinforcement magistrate of the Central Court of Instruction Number 6 has followed the criteria set by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which reported against assuming the investigation of these events, explaining that the competence to know them It was not from the National Court.
In the aforementioned complaint, the representation of the former banker pointed to alleged crimes of criminal organization, false documents, threats, illegal arrests, embezzlement and false testimony. In addition, it was also directed against the former ‘number two’ of the Interior Francisco Martínez, the former director general of the Police Ignacio Cosidó or the retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, among others.
The facts denounced are related to alleged extortion, coercion and blackmail since 2014 by agents of the National Police to those responsible for the BPA to obtain secret banking information protected by Andorran legislation from various rulers of Catalonia and their families, through illegal means. among them the former Catalan leaders Jordi Pujol, Artur Mas and Oriol Junqueras.
It was Gadea himself who agreed on September 26 to initiate preliminary proceedings as a result of that letter. Then, the judge transferred it to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office so that it could report on the jurisdiction of the court and, if applicable, the steps to be taken.
This was the second complaint that Miquel’s representation presented in the same sense before the National High Court after the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 6, Manuel García Castellón, refused last July to investigate this matter, also alluding to the question of competition.
The lawyer of the former CEO of the BPA sent that first letter to García Castellón when he understood that the reported facts were related to ‘Tándem’, the macro-case in which the judge investigates the private commissions carried out by Villarejo allegedly using his police status in active
García Castellón, however, rejected this claim, considering that the facts were not within his jurisdiction. Miquel’s representation, on the other hand, considered that the AN was the competent court insofar as this case entailed considerable economic damage linked to the liquidation of the entity, for which he filed a second complaint arguing more extensively why he understood that the AN was in charge of taking on the investigation.
It should be remembered that the Justice of the Principality of Andorra is already investigating these same facts. Specifically, the judge is investigating former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, former Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Día and former Minister of Finance Cristóbal Montoro for alleged crimes of coercion, threats, blackmail, extortion, coercion of constitutional bodies and the creation of a false document for their alleged relationship with the attempts to learn “through illegal means” secret bank information of the former presidents of the Generalitat Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas, as well as former vice president Oriol Junqueras.
