The Second Chamber (Criminal Chamber) of the Supreme Court agreed this week to open a trial against García Ortiz, in order to investigate whether he committed a crime of revealing secrets for the public dissemination, through a press release, of confidential data about the businessman Alberto Gonzalez Amador, boyfriend of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
The Attorney General himself assumed the consequences of releasing this statement to the press, which denied the information published by some media, which claimed to have been the prosecutor of the case in which González Amador is the subject of an investigation into alleged tax fraud, which had proposed a pact for Ayuso’s boyfriend. But the opposite happened and it was the defense who proposed a deal.
This week’s Supreme Court decision marks the first time that criminal proceedings have been opened in Spain against the highest representative of the public prosecutor’s office, who, for the moment, continues to have power full support of the government of Pedro Sánchez. In addition, García Ortiz ruled out any resignation, considering his continuity as “the least burdensome and most prudent for the institution in the medium and long term.”
However, Clean Hands, appearing in this trial as a popular accusation, now demands that the Supreme Court suspend García Ortiz from office “as a precautionary measure.”
Among other reasons, his lawyer mentions “the essential function” that the prosecution plays in a procedure like this. Therefore, if García Ortiz continues to be head of the Public Ministry, The prosecutor in charge of the case “could not intervene in a completely impartial manner, since (…) he will do so subject to the hierarchical dependence of the person indicted”.
“The simple abstention of the person indicted would not be enough to avoid this violation of impartiality, since he or she will continue to occupy a hierarchical position superior to other members of the public prosecutor,” underlines the text by Manos Liminas.
The partner of the president of the Community of Madrid, Alberto González Amador.
Víctor Soriano i Piqueras, the union’s lawyer in this procedure, emphasizes that García Ortiz, if he remains in office, could “adopt decisions of a professional nature, even with economic effects”, which would affect the rest of the members of the public prosecutor’s office . , in addition to “conserving the disciplinary powers about them.”
In the opinion of Clean Hands, this situation would create a “situation of informal submission at will by anyone who intervenes” in the proceedings opened against him. This is why this popular accusation asks the Supreme Court to suspend García Ortiz from his functions.
In his writings he recognizes the uniqueness of this situation, since no prosecutor in Spain occupies a hierarchical position in relation to García Ortiz. “That being said, budgets are granted for the adoption of the requested precautionary measures,” says Clean Hands.
