The National Court endorses the decision to remove Esperanza Aguirre from the Púnica case

2023-11-21 23:43:15

The National Court has endorsed the decision of the judge in the Púnica case, Manuel García Castellón, to archive the piece on the alleged irregular financing of the Madrid PP between 2007 and 2011 for the former Madrid presidents Esperanza Aguirre and Ignacio González.

The fourth section of the Criminal Law has issued an order, to which EFE had access this Tuesday, in which it rejects the appeal filed by the popular accusation exercised by the Association of Democratic Lawyers for Europe (ADADE) against the order to proceed to procedure abbreviated (equivalent to processing) of the judge.

In said order, from October 2022, the magistrate proposed trying the former Madrid councilor Francisco Granados, the former manager of the Madrid PP Beltrán Gutiérrez and six others investigated for the alleged irregular financing of the party in the 2011 regional elections and online positioning contracts of high ranks.

The magistrate then left the former Madrid presidents Esperanza Aguirre and Ignacio González out of the case, in line with the criteria of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, fundamentally due to the statute of limitations and the lack of solid evidence. A year earlier, the judge had already removed former president Cristina Cifuentes from the case.

The Chamber states in its order that “there is no evidence” that the former president of Madrid and the PP of Madrid Esperanza Aguirre “has used the powers that she had been granted in her capacity” as president of Fundescam, so that “not only can it be concluded that there was no an improper use of the foundation’s funds” by Aguirre, but from a telephone conversation he had with Ignacio González, the magistrates deduce that “he was unaware of what the functions of the aforementioned foundation were.”

In said conversation, which the accusation alleged in its appeal and the order reproduces, both spoke about the “functioning” of Fundescam and its alleged use “as a means of financing the Madrid popular party” and at a certain moment, Aguirre stated: “That we “We have jumped the limit of electoral money for the campaign, well, maybe, but of course Fundescam has not paid.”

After years of investigation, of the 79 accused, the magistrate only saw evidence to put eight on the bench.

What happens with Aguirre and González is that the crimes of electoral falsification linked to the regional elections of 2007 and 2008 would have expired, so the judge decided not to send them to trial.

Furthermore, the Chamber recalls, the judge saw no evidence of the crime of embezzlement with respect to González “as there was no incriminating data of the collusive plan of the elite of the popular party in favor of its financing.”