The Supreme Prosecutor of Madrid, Almudena Lastra, asked the Superior Court of Justice of the Community of does not admit to having dealt with the complaint filed by Begoña Gómezwife of the president of the government, against the judge who is investigating her for alleged corruption crimes, Juan Carlos Peinado.
Gómez filed a complaint on August 2 against the president of Madrid’s investigating court number 41. three days after her husband filed another criminal case against Peinado.
The prosecution requested that Pedro Sánchez’s complaint be admitted for processing and that criminal proceedings be opened against the investigating judge for alleged prevarication, but today requested that Gómez’s complaint be dismissed “at this stage and with the evidence and legal arguments that are available.” contributed.”
Begoña Gómez’s complaint attributes to Peinado a crime of revelation of secrets and another of procrastination.
The first is based on the fact that the instructor, although he declared the proceedings secret, allowed the popular accusers to know the statements of two witnesses.
For Lastra, this “reveals no indication” of revealing secrets since Peinado had previously allowed the defense to use these witness statements and it was necessary to respect the principle of equality of arms between the parties.
With this argument, the main prosecutor affirmed the inadmissibility of the complaint filed against Peinado by the journalist Máximo Pradera, complaint already rejected by the Superior Court of Madrid.
Concerning the accusation of prevarication, Lastra regrets that the TSJM did not agree to obtain a complete copy of the file, which the prosecutor had requested under the protection of a legal provision which allows requesting the appropriate basic information in order to to determine the criminal charge. relevance of the facts which are the subject of a complaint against a judge.
“On the very rare occasions when this prosecution has asked this Court to resort to the above-mentioned precept, never been refused before. Even the Chamber itself ordered the collection of full testimonies of the procedure when it considered it appropriate to adopt the admission decision,” he emphasizes.
He explains that the basis of the request “was none other than to facilitate the adoption by the Chamber of the decision whether or not to initiate the procedure in full knowledge of what had been done”.
“The unusual way of carrying out the magistrate’s instructionin which we agree with the complainant, and, above all, the expectation of a large number of appeals filed by all parties involved in the procedure, some referring to resolutions described as arbitrary, have led us to present request for convenience. to analyze as a whole the denounced manner of proceeding of the person against whom the complaint is directed”, he adds.
In any case, Many calls are awaiting resolution by the instructor or by the Provincial Court of Madrid, specifies the prosecutor.
“This remedy is what our procedural model envisages to guarantee the correct exercise of the judicial function inherent to the Rule of Law, a legal asset protected by article 446 of the Penal Code”, which characterizes the crime of prevarication .
For this reason, he considers that “it is not reasonable for the person indicted in the context of legal proceedings to pronounce “per saltum” [saltándose las instancias intermedias] to the Superior Court of Justice by filing a complaint to dismiss the person investigating him, when has not exhausted the procedural tools to express its disagreement with what has been resolved.”
The Attorney General understands that the actions reported as procrastinating “have already obtained or will obtain a response through the resources established in the law.”
“The other indications to which the complaint refers (search for political and social impact or excessive desire for a leading role) are simple subjective evaluations interested parties without concrete factual support”, he believes.
