The accusations ask for 6 years in prison for Gómez Iglesias for alleged fraud against a businessman
MADRID, 25 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Franciso Nicolás Gómez Iglesias, better known as ‘Little Nicolás’, has assured that he faces the new trial that starts this Tuesday, accused of posing as a member of the Government to defraud businessman Javier Martínez de la Hidalga with the sale of the farm of ‘La Alamedilla’ (Toledo), “with encouragement and strength”.
“Everything is fine,” he said in statements to the press upon his arrival at the Madrid Provincial Court. Likewise, he has expressed his wish that everything “end as soon as possible”, emphasizing that it is a case that began in 2014. His lawyer has expressed himself in the same vein, who has assured that the accusations made against his client ” They don’t hold.”
The Prosecutor’s Office, the State Attorney’s Office and the Unified Municipal Police Association –which exercises popular accusation– ask for Gómez Iglesias to be sentenced to six years in prison for alleged crimes of fraud, false documents and usurpation of public functions.
The prosecutor also requests special disqualification for passive suffrage and a fine of 18,000 euros. The popular accusation of Podemos, for its part, calls for 12 years in prison.
‘Little Nicolás’ will sit on the bench for some events that date back to October 2014. According to the Public Ministry, at that time Gómez Iglesias contacted the businessman Javier Martínez de la Hidalga, who was interested in selling the farm ‘La Alamedilla’.
In its 2018 indictment, the Prosecutor’s Office maintains that ‘Little Nicolás’ would have posed as a member of the work team of the then Vice President of the Executive, Soraya Sáez de Santamaría and as a member of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) . Thus, he held several meetings with the businessman in which he persuaded him of the Government’s interest in helping him sell the farm located in Toledo to a foreign buyer.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Gómez Iglesias mentioned an Equatorial Guinean authority as a possible buyer and even asked Martínez de la Hidalga for 300,000 euros as an intermediary in the sale of the property.
During the negotiations, ‘Little Nicolás’ learned that the Tax Agency had issued a settlement proposal of 5 million euros against the businessman and the Petraxarquia company. The prosecutor in the case considers that Gómez Iglesias “with the intention of obtaining an illicit economic benefit” took advantage of this situation and devised a plan to seize the financial assets –more than half a million euros– of Martínez de la Hidalga and his wife.
The Public Ministry emphasizes that the accused, in his strategy to make the businessman believe that he was acting on behalf of the Government, rented high-end black vehicles with a driver, and took possession of a police-type flashlight to place it in said vehicles.
In addition, he would have prepared several “mendacious” official documents from the Presidency of the Government of Spain, the Royal House and the CNI, among others, in which the coats of arms of Spain and those institutions appear, as well as other logos and anagrams typical of official documents. , all of them obtained on the Internet.
Similarly, the prosecutor indicates that “Little Nicolás” published several photographs on his Facebook profile in which he appeared with personalities from politics and the business world. Among the images, the reception of the King on the day of the coronation stands out, a photo with the former President of the Government José María Aznar at the FAES Foundation, another with the former President of the Community of Madrid Esperanza Aguirre and others in which the accused is seen in meetings and events with businessmen.
According to the report of the Public Ministry, Gómez Iglesias told Martínez de la Hidalga that the Tax Agency had ordered the embargo of his accounts and that to avoid it he had to collaborate with an alleged investigation by the Executive. After several meetings, and “suspecting that everything was a scam”, the businessman tried to delay the commercial operation. The owner of ‘La Alamedilla’ delivered 25,000 euros to ‘Little Nicolás’, but he later returned the money.
At the time of his arrest, a 49-page dossier with the letterhead of the Presidency of the Government entitled “Vice Presidency of the Government and Ministry of the Presidency. Committee for the planning of the E-GG Plan” and a bound dossier of 44 sheets with the letterhead of the Presidency of the Government entitled “Planning Report July 31-Report of the Royal House-General Directorate of State Heritage-Report of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism”. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, all the documentation was false.
In the home search, among many other effects and documents, a blue police newspaper, an emblem plate of the Madrid Municipal Police and an emblem plate of the Civil Guard were seized.
Gómez Iglesias, who remains free, was sentenced in June 2021 to one year and nine months in prison as the author of a crime of falsifying an official document for falsifying an ID so that a friend could take the 2012 Selectivity exam.
In July 2021, he was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes of usurpation of public functions and active bribery, although a mitigating circumstance has been found for “psychic abnormality”, for the trip he made in August 2014 to Ribadeo posing as a link between the Government and the Royal House.
In 2018, for his part, he was acquitted of the crimes of slander and insults against the State Security Forces and Bodies.
