He relies on ‘Gürtel’ to request that the PP be prosecuted as a participant for profit and criminally responsible
MADRID, 20 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The PSOE has appealed the decision of the judge of the National High Court (AN)) Manuel García Castellón to file the separate piece number 9 of the ‘Púnica’ macro-cause, among others, for the former president of the Community of Madrid Esperanza Aguirre, assuring that the investigation has revealed “a concerted plan” since his arrival at the Presidency that sought to “get extraordinary financing” for the regional PP.
In a 112-page document, to which Europa Press has had access, the socialists also point to Aguirre’s successor, Ignacio González, former counselor Francisco Granados and former Madrid PP manager Beltrán Gutiérrez as the people who, together with the former president, they remained “always in decision-making positions” in the years in which this alleged criminal strategy would have persisted.
“This whole piece should be seen as a plan, devised from the beginning, to illegally finance the Popular Party. And illegal financing is not only falsifying the electoral accounts or exceeding the electoral spending limit, but to reach such an end, it must collect the money, which in this case is done by different means, by awarding contracts without provision of service, or overvalued, payments in cash, false invoicing, payment charged to other contracts awarded to third parties as a commission in favor of the Popular Party”, denounce the socialists.
In the opinion of the PSOE, this plan began with the arrival of Aguirre to the Presidency in the 2003 elections and was born from the “need to proceed with the payment of the extraordinary electoral expenses that had been incurred.” “And that is lengthened in time to pay for the successive acts, whether they were electoral or not, but for those who did not spare any expense, until the police intervention and the departure of the positions in the Madrid administration of the different participants”, holds.
The party led by Pedro Sánchez considers that “the electoral campaigns were the moment in which all the previously obtained resources were put into action.” They are those same resources, they maintain, that allowed the PP “to go to those campaigns in a hidden financial situation and different from that of the other competitors.”
“The continuous fraudulent awarding of public contracts, the diversion of public money, the fraudulent use of public subsidies, the constant false documents, the use and collaboration of related companies for payments to other third parties, the payment of personal services using administrative entities* only it is understood and it only makes sense if we put it in direct connection with illicit financing”, indicates the PSOE.
The Socialists have appealed to García Castellón his decision to file for Aguirre and González due to the alleged existence of a ‘box b’ also in the Madrid PP, with which the 2007, 2008 and 2011 elections would have been partially financed, some alleged corruption for which he did prosecute Granados and Gutiérrez.
García Castellón indicated then that the facts related to the 2007 and 2008 elections would be prescribed, but he sees signs of crime in those of 2011, specifying that, although the electoral account recorded costs of 2.9 million euros -those declared before the Chamber of Accounts–, the total expenses that the municipal and regional elections represented for the Madrid PP amounted to 6.8 million.
The PSOE, however, considers that the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 6 should not have “automatically applied the prescription, crime by crime, separately, without taking into account the general context and the interrelationships between the different facts.”
Thus, it argues that, since there is criminal competition, the crimes of bribery, embezzlement, fraud, prevarication and false documentation would prescribe after 15 years. “If, in addition, we take into account that said crimes concur in medial contest of article 77 C.P., in accordance with the reform of the same operated in the year 2010, the sentence to be imposed could be even higher than fifteen years, with which the prescription of these crimes would occur over the course of twenty years,” he adds.
In his opinion, “it is not the right procedural moment to analyze the statute of limitations for crimes in which the penalty is exasperated, an analysis that can only be carried out in sentencing.” This, he argues, “reinforces the impossibility of such a hasty and premature declaration of prescription.” “But what is evident is that there is no prescription for any of the possible crimes under investigation,” she concludes.
He also combats the judge’s decision to reject his request and that of the IU to charge the PP as a profit-making participant. In this sense, he not only asks to be prosecuted as such for the investigated events that took place between 2003 and 2013, but also as “criminally responsible” for those that occurred since 2014 and until the end of the analyzed period, when he could be blamed for said responsibility due to the legal changes operated.
For García Castellón, it would be “inappropriate” because the facts are not related to the national party, but, in any case, “with the territorial entity that enjoys full autonomy and self-management for its interests.” And, secondly, because it would be an “unnecessary and useless” accusation, given that the possible crimes are prescribed.
The socialist accusation says that it is “absolutely false” that the national PP is a legal entity different from the Madrid PP. “What’s more, according to the PP’s own statutes, the manager (responsible for the electoral and party accounts) reports to the National Management. In fact, in the case of Beltrán Gutiérrez it was the National Popular Party that proceeded to dismiss him,” he says. .
In this sense, he underlines that “the presentation of accounts must be done in a consolidated way, so the Popular Party must integrate and consolidate the regional accounts and, therefore, be responsible for them.”
To reinforce his arguments, he cites the rulings of ‘Gürtel’ that condemn the PP as a participant for profit. “The sentence and the jurisprudence is clear and forceful, any contribution of illicit money to the accounts, whether electoral or to PP activities, wherever they occur, benefit the PP and consequently it assumes responsibility,” he ditches.
