Unexpected turn in the corruption case involving Ana Millán, Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s number three in the Madrid PP. The Prosecutor’s Office puts an end to Millán’s urgency for the High Court of Madrid (TSJM) to decide her future by asking the Navalcarnero court that indicted her to complete the ongoing proceedings. Without exhausting the investigation, the Navalcarnero judge recused herself in July in favor of the Madrid court, before which the former mayor of Arroyomolinos has been sitting since she became a regional deputy.
The procedures that Judge Navalcarnero stopped carrying out before recusing herself in favor of the TSJM are relevant. This is what Millán’s husband claims, one of the relatives who was hired by a businessman at the same time that the youth councilor of the city of Madrid at the time was awarding him public contracts. The other procedure that is underway is the statement of the PP colleague who replaced Millán in the Department and who, upon taking office, stopped hiring Francisco Roselló’s companies, investigated the businessman with Millán.
The Navalcarnero Investigative Court Number 6 indicted Ana Millán two years ago in a case that originated in the change of government in Arroyomolinos in 2015. The incoming team found an email to the Youth Department that Millán had just left in that alluded to her relationship with a businessman. A company owned by Francisco Roselló rented a penthouse to Ana Millán for almost double the market price.
Pulling the rope, the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard concluded that Millán, his sister and her husband – the latter two hired by Roselló’s companies – had received more than 200,000 euros from the businessman during the same period in which his companies received contracts from the City Council, mainly from the Department of Millán, for 600,000 euros.
Despite Millán’s accusations, her friend Isabel Díaz Ayuso registered her in a high position on the PP lists of the Community of Madrid in the last regional elections. After the elections of May 2023, Ana Millán qualified and requested that her case be heard by the competent court, in this case the Superior of Madrid, with a large conservative majority. Millán’s request led to the suspension of the declarations of her husband and his successor in the department, as recalled by the prosecutor’s office in a letter to which elDiario.es had access.
The Navalcarnero judge accepted Millán’s request and recused himself in favor of the TSJM, which decided on August 2 to begin the proceedings before deciding whether or not to prosecute Millán. In a judgment issued a month later, on September 3, the court appointed Francisco José Goyena as an instructor, the same judge who asked the Supreme Court to indict the state attorney general for a press release that denied the hoax of the Ayuso couple.
While the report from the Prosecutor’s Office was awaiting on whether or not the TSJM should charge Millán, the Public Ministry chose to appeal the inhibition of Judge Navalcarnero. The interdiction order, says the Prosecutor’s Office, “is not in accordance with the law” because if Millán was certified, what the magistrate should have done is to present a reasoned statement before the TSJM and not simply dictate the interdiction, according to what is established by the Code of Criminal Procedure in its article 759.2.
The reasoned statement is a judicial resolution that analyzes in depth the evidence gathered against the person under investigation in the ordinary judicial system so that the higher court can decide whether to continue with the accusation of the accused. The judge of Navalcarnero limited himself to summarizing in a four-page order the abundant evidence gathered by the Civil Guard “without first presenting a motivation containing the necessary factual and legal elements” for the TSJM to decide, the prosecutor’s office claims. In the order, the judge of Navalcarnero mentioned the four corruption crimes for which she was investigating Millán: bribery, embezzlement, influence peddling and fraud against the administration.
53,000 euros in cash from her husband
The Court, the Prosecutor’s Office and the popular accusations – led by the PSOE and Más Madrid – have been trying since May 2022 to get Millán’s husband to testify. His appearances have been suspended for various reasons, including because it has not been possible to locate him.
In its reports, the Civil Guard suspects almost 53,000 euros that Ana Millán deposited in cash in her accounts between 2008 and 2017, the period that covers the investigation into her alleged corrupt relationship with businessman Roselló. Before the judge, she stated that her husband, and later her partner, worked in the nightlife and hotel sector, that he brought cash home and that she preferred to deposit it in the bank rather than have it at home.
For the moment, the judge of Navalcarnero, Lidia Prada, has accepted the prosecutor’s appeal for treatment and has informed the parties so that they can decide before adopting a decision. As expected, the TSJM could not decide before the decision of the Navalcarnero court, since it had requested a report from the prosecutor’s office on Millán’s accusation and the public prosecutor chose to request that the investigation of the local court be exhausted.
