The top prosecutor of Madrid, Almudena Lastra, assured this Thursday in the Supreme Court that, on the morning of March 14, 2024, she asked the State Attorney General if there was Alberto González Amador, partner of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and accused of tax fraud, and Álvaro García Ortiz replied: “That doesn’t matter now.” Legal sources assure that, according to the explanations given by Lastra, the question was asked in a reproachful tone, assuming that the leak had come from the Attorney General’s Office. The senior prosecutor has also assured that it caught her attention that in the information published that day there was data that could not have come from anywhere other than the Prosecutor’s Office.
Lastra and the Economic Crimes prosecutor in charge of investigating González Amador, Julián Salto, have testified in the Supreme Court, where they were summoned as witnesses in the case opened to the attorney general for revelation of secrets. Magistrate Ángel Hurtado, investigator of the case, has summoned them to look for evidence about the leak to various media outlets of an email from the lawyer of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner. In that emailthat the defense admitted two tax crimes and offered a pact to the public prosecutor to avoid his client going to prison.
The email under investigation was first reported in the media on the night of March 13. The next morning, several media outlets were already talking about that email, and, in that context, the conversation between Lastra and García Ortiz that the senior prosecutor has recounted before the judge took place. According to Lastra, that morning she was “burned” by the leak of the complaint and the emails and by the press release written the night before by the Attorney General’s Office, which she claims she did not share. That statement, according to her version, was sent to her at 8:44 by her press officer, who threatened to resign if the Superior Prosecutor’s Office signed it. Lastra has told the Supreme Court that she asked for time to read the note before it was disseminated, but the Attorney General’s Office made it public at 9:03.
Lastra has assured that that morning he had six missed calls from the attorney general that he could not answer because he was in a tunnel without coverage. When they finally spoke, they exchanged opinions about what happened and the conversation took place about the leak of the email that the senior prosecutor told Judge Hurtado. The superior prosecutor has also narrated the exchange of calls and messages that occurred on the night of March 13, when the Attorney General’s Office demanded from the Madrid woman the emails exchanged with González Amador’s lawyer to prepare a press release with which to deny the hoax that Díaz Ayuso’s entourage was launching.
Prosecutor Salto had the emails, who that night was at the Metropolitan Stadium watching a game, so it took him a while to send some of the documents they were demanding. Lastra has assured that, at the insistence of the Attorney General’s Office to access those mailsshe told the provincial prosecutor —Pilar Rodríguez, also investigated in the high court— that they were not necessary for the preparation of the press release and that there was a risk of them being leaked.
Lastra already testified as a witness last June in the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid, where the case began to be investigated. At that time, what was being investigated was not the leak, but the press release issued by the Prosecutor’s Office. However, legal sources assure that the senior prosecutor was also asked then about the leak of the complaint and the case emails, but she did not tell those details of her conversations with the prosecutor Rodríguez and with García Ortiz that she has narrated now.
The senior prosecutor has stressed before the judge that she conveyed her “anger” about the note and the leak to the provincial head. Lastra assumed from the beginning that all the information had come from the Prosecutor’s Office because in the information broadcast on the night of March 13 on Cadena SER, which was the first to broadcast the content of the email from González Amador’s lawyer, there was data that they only came in the information procedures that had been sent from the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office to the General Prosecutor’s Office to report on the case given its media relevance. The Prosecutor’s Office complaint against González Amador was filed on February 20, but, according to Lastra, she was not aware until March 8 that the alleged fraudster was Ayuso’s partner.
Lastra’s statement lasted for one hour and 35 minutes. A little less, around an hour, lasted the statement of prosecutor Salto, who also stated that he was not aware that the owner of the company Maxwell Cremona was a partner of the president of the Community of Madrid. Until the night of March 13, when The World published that the Prosecutor’s Office had proposed a pact for the defense of González Amador, no one complained about the emails exchanged with the lawyer, which dismantled that version because they left evidence that it was the lawyer who, after admitting that his client had committed two tax crimes, He had opened the door to an agreement with the Public Ministry that would free him from going to prison. According to Salto, that night they urged him to send the mails because, according to what the provincial prosecutor told him, García Ortiz wanted them “now.”
Salto, who is responsible for computer applications and new technologies at the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office, has also been asked about the existence of a protocol that urges prosecutors to delete all the content of their mobile phones regularly and to format and empty the terminal. old when they change devices. That was the explanation given by prosecutors after learning that García Ortiz changed his device on October 23—when the Supreme Court had already prosecuted him for revealing secrets—and deleted the messages sent and received from his mobile phone. This operation, these sources assured, had been carried out in compliance with an instruction on data protection issued in 2019 and a guide disseminated by the data protection delegate of the Prosecutor’s Office in 2022. Prosecutor Salto has claimed to be unaware of the existence of such protocol.
