The Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors (APIF)—which exercises popular accusation in the case that is being followed in the Supreme Court following the complaint filed by the partner of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, for revealing secrets—has attributed to the main investigator, the state attorney general, Alvaro Garcia Ortiztwo new crimes: “illicit seizure of information” and “prevarication.”
In a letter, to which Europa Press has had access, the association asks Judge Ángel Hurtado that already summons García Ortiz to declare as investigatedafter the reports from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard relating to the information seized in the search of the attorney general’s office and in the office of the provincial chief prosecutor of Madrid, Pilar, have been provided to the case. Rodriguez.
The APIF also requests the instructor to require the data protection delegate of the Prosecutor’s Office to provide “the data erasure protocols that exist in storage terminalswhich includes mobile phones and computers of all kinds.
The mobile call list
Among the battery of proceedings that the judge is demanding, the association includes the “list of incoming and outgoing mobile calls” of García Ortiz and Rodríguez on the night of March 13 to 14 to prove whether they spoke with journalists. And he asks in turn to prove whether the attorney general “has changed his mobile phone since March 13.”
The association, represented by lawyers Juan Antonio Frago, Verónica Suárez, Álvaro Bernad and Napoléon Cánovas, maintains that from the UCO report regarding Rodríguez “it is clearly deduced that the version that the lack of protection and filtering, especially during the night hours those that were produced, It can only come from the person under investigation“, in reference to García Ortiz.
The messages “in total darkness”
The APIF emphasizes that, “before filtering, there is a portion of the iter criminis which is already fully committed by the person under investigation: the illicit seizure of information. “Neither the State Attorney General nor the Provincial Chief had this information at their disposal.no matter how much the institution is hierarchically finished first,” they emphasize.
Next, they claim that García Ortiz, instead of “calling a prosecutor to his presence, and through the regulatory channels,” chose to “break the rest or free time of a tax official so that, at night, sensitive documentation is required via Whatsapp, and so that this ends up being deposited in a non-corporate email”.
For the association, This is “a security breach in data protection.” “Therefore, in our opinion, the illegal seizure is clearly consummated,” he adds.
A crime of “administrative prevarication”
Furthermore, the APIF considers that “The crime of administrative prevarication has also been proven“, since the attorney general “transmitted verbal orders and through an unorthodox means, WhatsApp, so that, in the end, prosecutor Julián Salto redirected emails that were not within the reach of any of those investigated,” in reference to García Ortiz and Rodríguez.
The association understands that “the form is insurmountable (calls and WhatsApp clearly outside of working hours), the lack of subsequent record (this action was not included in official documents), the subsequent deletion of the WhatsApp messages from the cell phone of the investigated Álvaro García Ortiz, incriminating evidence where there is any, the lack of electronic signature, the absence of legality by not complying with the channels of the Organic Statute of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for obtaining information from a hierarchical inferior” and the “security gap when removing secret information from a secure environment to a non-corporate email.”
“All this leads us to point to a crime of administrative prevarication in competition with the crime of infidelity in the custody of public documents or discovery and revelation of secrets,” says the APIF.