He says that Beltrán Gutiérrez was the one who managed the money and that the former presidents could have “known” his maneuvers
MADRID, 20 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Former Madrid councilor Francisco Granados has asked the judge of the National High Court (AN) who is investigating the alleged existence of a ‘box b’ in the Madrid PP with which the 2007, 2008 and 2011 elections would have been financed to revoke his prosecution for this separate piece number 9 of ‘Púnica’, assuring that his role as campaign manager was “merely testimonial”, for which he believes that he should be exonerated like his superiors, former presidents Esperanza Aguirre and Ignacio González.
In a 115-page appeal for reform, to which Europa Press has had access, Granados asks the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 6, Manuel García Castellón, to correct his decision of last Friday, with which he was prosecuted — along with seven other people– at the same time that the judicial investigation was filed for another 71, including Aguirre and González.
Granados defends that the alleged electoral crimes that are imputed to him for the 2011 elections are prescribed, as are those related to those of 2007 and 2008, two votes with respect to which the instructor already appreciated that the eventual criminal responsibility had been extinguished by over time.
“All this regardless of maintaining, at all times, the innocence of my representative who has always acted in accordance with the law, as it could not be otherwise in relation to the position he held in said merely testimonial and political period,” he says. your attorney in writing.
He maintains that, as campaign director, he was “outside of any economic management or possibility of mediating in these aspects, with suppliers, donors, and third parties who could hold any position in the popular party or in the aforementioned campaign”, which – -he alleges– “it makes the commission of any illicit impossible”.
In this sense, he points out that the judge confuses the functions of the campaign director with those of the electoral administrator, at that time Beltrán Gutiérrez -another of the eight defendants-, “who is the one who effectively manages everything that could be related to economic aspects in payments, contracts, etc”.
“Even the campaign manager is unable to discredit, control and contradict the electoral administrator, being the ordinary organs of the party only and exclusively those that can protect Mr. Beltrán’s role as appointed administrator,” he details.
In this context, the lawyer sees a “contradiction” in the fact that the judge files for “the majority of those investigated, including those who, due to rank in the party and in the elections themselves, are much higher than my defendant based on the position that they held and that are the ones that really and for those same circumstances, could have managed or known to enter within their faculties”.
At this point, he recalls that the secretary general of the PP in Madrid in November 2011 was González, “who was also elected as ‘number one’ on the list in that campaign and president, at the same time, of the electoral committee, as well as vice president of the Government and person who controlled, due to his interest in said campaign, all the acts derived from it, together with the president of the party”, Aguirre.
For this reason, he emphasizes, it seems to them “a contradiction” to prosecute “someone who functionally and by organization chart lacks the power and competence to manage the accusation thesis, especially when those mentioned are the ones who have said competence and perform said functions, together with the administrator referred electoral, Mr. Beltrán”.
It also adds that “it is an undisputed, objective and notorious fact” that Granados “was dismissed from all the positions he held within the party and on the Government and Community Council precisely in that year and after those elections, June and November 2011, that is, immediately after, when these elections and their results were still hot”.
“This proves without more than even the function that as campaign manager they kept him was, testimonial, decorative or merely on screen, to avoid rumors, dimes and diretes or political speculations that could be used by the opposition party before the elections. and that were breathed in the political and media environment of the Government”, he indicates.
However, Granados’ defense slips that his prosecution is only due to the fact that he has been profiled as “the main artist since 2014 in what has been called the ‘Punic’ plot in all his witnessed pieces, which could well be project in a prolonged sequence of different chapters or sessions by how it begins, develops or could end”.
Along the same lines, he takes the opportunity to reproach that “Granados preventively served almost three years in prison for an economic embezzlement that the Public Prosecutor’s Office maintained ad nauseam and without any proof, no more and no less, for 700 million euros, so that he then barely makes a year this amount is modified to five million euros in the assets of the person under investigation, which even includes his hereditary part”.
