Judge Rafael Passaro, president of the Instruction Court 2 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, agreed to deal with a complaint filed by Carlos Sosa, director of Canary Islands nowagainst former judge Salvador Alba and his partner, judicial administration lawyer Teresa Lorenzo, for the alleged crimes of discovery of secrets and disobedience to judicial authority. The instructor opened the proceedings by order last Saturday and summoned them both as defendants on January 28 and 29.
Sosa accuses both of having disclosed data declared secret in the case that a Madrid court handled against the journalist after the complaint filed by Alba against him for the information published by Canarias Ahora on the criminal maneuvers carried out by the former judge in an attempt to end his career. . political and professional of judge Victoria Rosell, former government delegate against gender violence and companion of Sosa.
Alba filed this complaint after being harshly sentenced to six and a half years in prison for judicial prevarication, corruption and falsification of a public document, according to the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC), firstly, and the Supreme Court, then. , concluded who hijacked a criminal case he was investigating to replace Rosell (who had requested leave to run in elections with Podemos) with the sole desire to harm him.
Alba’s complaint against Sosa was admitted for processing by Judge María Ángeles Velázquez, president of the Investigative Court 27 of Madrid, in an order, issued in the summer of 2022, in which she expressly warned and requested of the complainant of the ban on the dissemination of the documents. “The debates will be reserved and will not be public until the opening of an oral trial,” specifies this judicial decision, in which it also warns the parties of the responsibilities provided for by the Penal Code that they could incur in the event of disclosure. .
Despite this express warning, the data of this case declared secret were published in Confilegal, OkDiario and Radio Las Palmas before the judge issued (on February 5) the order to open an oral trial against the journalist, for which Alba He is asking for 23 years in prison. prison for hate crimes, harassment and revealing secrets. It is for this reason that Sosa had to post a deposit of 422,500 euros. The public prosecutor’s office has already requested the dismissal and acquittal of the director of Canarias Ahora, because the information published “exposed facts of public interest worthy of interest without publishing the private or intimate data of the complainant.”
The first information from these media on the journalist’s file was published in June 2022, after notification to the parties to the complaint. In the publications Confilegal and OkDiario passages from Alba’s complaint and the order to open the investigation are reproduced.
This complaint was also taken up on Radio Las Palmas by the communicator Juan Santana, who for two decades was press chief for former minister José Manuel Soria (PP) and who, since the start of the Alba affair, had former corrupt judge as a regular collaborator in his work. program.
According to Sosa’s complaint, Alba and his partner also failed to respect the mandate of the investigating judge by giving Confilegal not only the order to transform the preliminary procedure into an abbreviated procedure, a step preceding the opening of the trial oral, but also the written accusation of the complainants. This portal specializing in legal information is headed by Carlos Berbell, who also maintains a close relationship with Alba and even wrote a statement published by the former judge when he had already been suspended and was awaiting the trial that took place. ended up condemning him. .
In January of this year, Confilegal published an article titled “Victoria Rosell’s partner will sit on the bench for the alleged commission of three crimes against former magistrate Salvador Alba”, with information extracted from this case declared secret.
Sosa’s complaint indicates that these publications predate the order to open the oral trial and that, therefore, information declared secret or reserved was revealed of which only the parties in person, the plaintiff and the defendant, were aware. fluent.
In the order issued last Saturday, Judge Rafael Passaro opened preliminary proceedings and summoned Salvador Alba and Teresa Lorenzo as defendants for the month of January. Previously, in December, the journalists who signed these publications had to appear as witnesses, including Carlos Berbell and Juan Santana.
Abstention refused
When Carlos Sosa’s complaint came before the Court of Instruction 2 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, its owner, Rafael Passaro, asked to abstain. It was this magistrate who investigated and filed the complaint that Salvador Alba filed against Miguel Ángel Ramírez, president of the Las Palmas Sports Union, for the recording that revealed the plot against Victoria Rosell. During this procedure, Alba threatened Passaro with prosecution for questioning him about the complete audio found by the Civil Guard in the trash of the recording device used by the businessman, who had delivered some a cut in court.
Some time later, the journalist Juan Santana, as part of the campaign that he was undertaking in his program of defense of Salvador Alba, in which he periodically invited to participate, carried out an interview with Passaro’s ex-wife in which serious accusations linked to the personal sphere of the president of the Instruction Court 2 of the capital of Gran Canaria. Santana ended up being ordered to compensate Passaro with 25,000 euros for damage to his honor.
These antecedents are the reasons given by the investigating judge to request an abstention which the Provincial Court of Las Palmas did not accept, forcing him to take charge of the case.
