The 3 hour and 19 minute audio recorded by the Madrid prosecutor Ignacio Stampa of the meeting he had with her on May 7 will continue in the case in which she and the businessman Javier Pérez Dolset are being investigated. The head of the Investigative Court Number 9 of Madrid, Arturo Zamarreño, who is investigating the alleged existence of a plot that tried to discredit leaders of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office responsible for cases against politicians and businessmen, has issued an order in which he refuses to annul these, as Díez herself had requested. She had declared on November 17 before the magistrate that her voice was not recognized in those recordings and alleged that with her inclusion in the case her rights to privacy, to the secrecy of communications and not to testify against herself were being violated. The former socialist militant is accused along with Pérez Dolset for the alleged commission of a crime of bribery and another of influence peddling.
In his resolution, Judge Zamarreño argues his decision that it is not appropriate “for the moment” to cancel said recordings, since during the investigation of the case is not the period for it. The magistrate points out that “this moment can be placed in the oral trial phase itself, by raising preliminary questions”, at the beginning of the hearing, when “the procedural object has already been substantially delimited through the presentation of the provisional conclusions, and the parties have also been able to delimit the evidentiary table that they will try to use to defend their respective claims.” In this sense, he emphasizes that it will then be when the court will have “an unbeatable perspective of analysis of all the actions”, which will allow it to “more rigorously assess the effects and mechanisms of interaction between the different means that make up the evidentiary framework.” The order does not allow appeal.
The audios came to the case from the prosecutor Stampa himself, who had previously provided other documentation, including precisely the appointment of May 7 in which he made the recording, as well as a notarial document in which he recorded its existence. The member of the public ministry also provided internal emails from the Prosecutor’s Office that showed that, following the publication in different media of information that pointed to Leire Díez as supposedly responsible for “plumbing work in the PSOE”, he cut off communication with the former socialist and informed his superiors of what happened. Stampa has become, in fact, one of the key witnesses in the case.
In the recording that the judge has now refused to annul “for the moment” the prosecutor is heard asking Díez if she was the “right hand” of the now former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE Santos Cerdán and she is already answering affirmatively. “This is strictly confidential and it is something that stays here, but let’s say that I am the person who has put the PSOE to see what is behind all this,” said the former socialist militant. In his statement as a witness before the judge, the prosecutor stated that he thought that Cerdán would attend the meeting. “I’ll transfer later, then I have a meeting with him,” explained Leire Díez upon his arrival minutes later.
That recorded conversation revolved around two topics. On the one hand, the investigation into the retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, in the audios that he recorded and in the information that both handle about prosecutors and judges. During part of these investigations, Stampa was one of the two prosecutors in charge of the case. On the other hand, about the fact that his position in Anti-Corruption was not renewed. , the prosecutor assured that his interlocutors tried to obtain information against his partner José Grinda (with whom he also contacted the alleged plot to offer him a pact), about the magistrate Manuel García-Castellón (who investigated the Villarejo case) and about the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Alejandro Luzón. “Luzon was the primary objective,” he told the judge.
