The waters fall revolts in the investigation of. The friction, discrepancies and, even, encounters of the prosecutor who carries the investigations, Carmen García Cerdá, with his boss in the Anti -Corruption Prosecutor, Alejandro Luzón; And the second of this, Antonio Romeral, as well as with some controls of the Civil Guard have shaken the judicial case in which they are charged with seven crimes. This is the chronology, elaborated from the testimonies of several knowledgeable sources of the back of the investigation and of documents incorporated into the summary, of a confrontation that has its origin in the intervention of the phones of four suspects and that continues with the frustrated attempt to delve into the investigations about an irregular use of sensitive fiscal information of journalists, political rivals and public characters.
November 19, 2017. That day, the Mossos d’Esquadra registered the headquarters that the Iberian Gas Messer company has in the Tarraconenses towns of Vila-Seca and El Morell. They sought indications of an alleged crime against the territory in an investigation initiated that year by the alleged irregular extension of an industrial plant. However, when analyzing, the Catalan police found in a casual way messages that pointed to the alleged existence of one with custom legislative reforms. “The most direct route, as always, is to pay this one that has direct contact with Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro,” said the message that fired the suspicions about the office that the then Minister of the PP had founded years before. Judicial investigation would formally open months later, on August 2, 2018, under the baton of the head of the Court of Instruction 2 of Tarragona, Rubén Rus Vela, and a provincial prosecutor, and with the Mossos as responsible for the investigations.
December 15, 2021. More than three years after the start of the investigation and with the case already in the hands of the Anti -Corruption Prosecutor’s Office – Garcia Cerdá assumed it – the first friction was forged. By then, the investigations continued to collect indications about the alleged involvement of the office founded by Montoro. That day, the Mossos presented in the Court, with the acquiescence of the prosecutor, an office in which they asked the judge to practice three proceedings. One era, all linked to economic team. The Autonomous Police considered that it was a necessary measure “to advance in clarification of the facts and the determination of all those responsible.” Judge Rus approved the measure the next day and, hours later, the Civil Guard, which had already been incorporated into the case at the request of anti -corruption, materialized the prick of communications.
However, those telephone interventions did not last long. Exactly 42 days. Shortly after they were authorized, the Anti -Corruption Prosecutor’s Office was contrary to the measure that, precisely, had supported the person in charge of the case and resorted to Judge Rus’s decision before the Provincial Court of Tarragona. According to prosecution sources, the discrepancy was that while Garcia Cerdá considered that the alleged members of the plot still acted as an alleged criminal organization, Luzón believed that no and that, therefore, it was disproportionate to intervene their communications years after the investigated facts had occurred. The audience gave the reason to the Chief of Anti -Corruption and annulled the telephone interventions in January 2022, although it maintained other measures requested by the Mossos, including the dump of several email accounts of the Ministry of Finance.
December 28, 2022. The Civil Guard sent García Cerdá that day a letter in which he rejected to prepare, as the prosecutor had asked for 16 days before, a report to request the judge authorization to register “homes and headquarters” of alleged involved and their companies “that can house documentation and sources of evidence relevant to the investigation”. The agents argued that “sufficient indications do not work in this unit to propose that measure, especially when other” less burdensome such as banking products “and had not been authorized. At that time, the agents had also refused to analyze the emails incorporated into the cause because, they claimed, this work had already been carried out by the Catalan police.
April 28, 2023. García Cerdá sent his superiors in anti -corruption – who had already been imposed by him to receive his approval in the steps he took in the investigation – a letter in which he requested authorization to ask Judge Rus to new proceedings. Specifically, identify the user of the Treasury Ministry account aromero@minhap.eswhich was allegedly used by Montoro to receive taxpayers fiscal information – among them the former government president Rodrigo Rato, the Madrid former president Esperanza Aguirre, tennis player Rafael Nadal or Tita Cervera, Baroness Thyssen. First Romeral and, later, Luzón, they rejected the proposal by considering that among the data incorporated into the cause there were no indications of the crime of revelation of secrets that ensured its subordinated that could have been perpetrated.
June 21, 2023. The prosecutor sent a letter to the Chief of Anti -Corruption in which she complained about an alleged obstructionist attitude of the UCO (with which the prosecutor had a work in tune in previous cases of corruption as Punic y Those). In that complaint I directly pointed to two of the controls: “They do not want to do anything, I do not know the true reasons for this decision,”. Civil Guard sources reject the prosecutor’s accusation, but admit discrepancies of criteria.
September 27, 2023. The disagreements reached a critical moment and García Cerdá invoked article 27 of the Statute of the Fiscal Ministry, which allows any prosecutor to show their discrepancy with the orders received by a superior and submit it to a vote at the Board of Anti -Corruption Prosecutors. She insisted that her superiors did not allow her to deepen the investigation into the alleged irregularities in sending confidential fiscal information to Montoro. The prosecutor lost the vote by 19 votes against and 5 in favor, including his.
October 25, 2023. Far from throwing the towel, García Cerdá phone that day rough Responsible for the investigation and asked, as he would declare this later, to request Judge Rus the cloning of the mail account whose alleged use was attributed to Montoro. The Catalan police agent reported this call to the Civil Guard and this, in turn, to Luzón, who opened a file to the prosecutor. In his statement before the promoter of disciplinary action, the rough He said that García Cerdá told her that she was not allowed to request that diligence and that she had to be the agent who raised her to the judge. García Cerdá was sanctioned by Serious disciplinary offense with a fine of 1,000 euros for having used “subterfuges” to mock the orders of their superiors. The prosecutor appealed, but the administrative contentious chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed last June the sanction.
September 19, 2024. The prosecutor presented a letter before the judge in which, again, he carried the Civil Guard. In the same, he recriminated the armed institute that he had not wanted to carry out an analysis of the electronic emails incorporated into the cause, and also due to the delay in the elaboration of a report on the movements in the bank accounts of the investigated because the banks had not sent him the information of 18 of the 339 banking products that were going to be analyzed. He claimed that he began “urgently” with the 321 of which he already had data.
Months later, on January 20, 2025, García Cerdá presented another letter to the court with the same complaint. Finally, the UCO delivered the report the following month, in which it concluded that it had not found anomalies in the destination that the economic team members had given the money received from the gas companies for the efforts under suspicion. The next step has already been the survey of secret and a flood of writings of the accused to cancel the investigation.
