The Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, declared yesterday before the leadership of the race, the College of Chamber Prosecutors, that has become a “political objective” in the middle of a situation of “polarization” which places him “in a sort of permanent target”.
García Ortiz did not at all link this perception to the criminal proceedings that the Supreme Court has just opened to verify whether the Attorney General intervened in the leak to the media of confidential data related to the complaint for tax crimes filed against the partner of President Madrid. , Isabel Diaz Ayuso.
Rather, it was an explanation of why García Ortiz believes that everything that comes out of the Attorney General is subject to “exaggerated criticism.”
The head of the public prosecutor’s office met yesterday for three hours with the prosecutors of the Chamber to inform them of his decision not to resign after the unanimous resolution of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court open a file for revealing secrets.
According to different sources from the Council, García Ortiz admitted that, on a personal level, it would be easier for him to leave and stressed that it was difficult for him to make a decision in which he tried to weigh “what is good “. or bad for your career.”tax”.
“Or less bad”this was corrected, because “the circumstances in which this mandate takes place have determined that it is central and constitutes an objective of a political nature.”
He stressed that all his decisions can be criticized and the appointments he proposed can be questioned, with some of them revoked by the Supreme Court. “It’s completely legitimate,” he said, because it falls under the attorney general’s jurisdiction.
“They asked me several times to resign”he recalled, as happened with previous attorneys general, which also seems legitimate to him.
But “the focus, polarization, extreme that we are reaching means that the figure of the Attorney General, always controversial, always placed in a kind of target, increases its visibility and is subject to increased criticism,” he said.
García Ortiz expressed his respect for the decision of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court and was I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong.
But this was not enough for several prosecutors of the Chamber, eight openly and others less clearly, to stop emphasizing that his refusal to resign places the institution in a very compromised situation, which will be “unsustainable” if an archival resolution is not produced within a short period of time.
The majority of Sala’s prosecutors expressed support for García Ortiz and urged him to “resist.”
Criticism of the Supreme Court
Legal criticism has also been made against the order of the Criminal Chamber, which sees no criminal evidence in the event that led to the raising of a declaration from the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (the informative note in which the Prosecutor’s Office spoke out against false news of the complaint filed against Ayuso’s partner) and sees indications in the revelation of emails exchanged between the defense of the accused and the prosecutor’s office (who did not want be the subject of an investigation by the TSJM and were not mentioned in the presentation to the Supreme Court).
Criticisms of the Supreme Court’s resolution were responded to, among others, by the anti-corruption prosecutor, Alejandro Luzón, and by the prosecutor at the TC, Pedro Crespo. The latter clarified that the order of the Criminal Chamber was not the subject of the Commission and that, if it were to be discussed, García Ortiz had to leave the meeting.
Luzón defended that it is a resolution “motivated and that collects evidence”, that is why the path it can take and the “limited situation” in which the Prosecutor’s Office will find itself depending on the agreed procedures raise concerns.
In this regard, Jaime Moreno said that “they will call the Attorney General to testify.” “If becoming prosecutor Álvaro García Ortiz is a bad thing, becoming attorney general is much worse because He carries all the prosecutors in his backpack“.
Unlike Dolores Delgado, who ardently defended her successor, former Attorney General María José Segarra expressed her concern “about the situation of the institution” to its highest official who is the subject of an investigation by the Supreme Court.
“There is no need to make a big deal about how many of us are for or against resigning,” Segarra said. “It is not for us to assess whether the decision not to resign is correct or not. But the situation will be untenable if the investigation continues and there is no quick resolution of the file.”
The Attorney General did not look to the future and left unresolved how he will act in the face of developments in the criminal process that has begun.
