Spain’s top prosecutor denied that he leaked confidential legal information against the conservative opposition, as he took the stand at his trial on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Alvaro Garcia Ortiz is the first serving attorney general in Spanish history to face trial, part of a series of legal controversies dogging Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority coalition.<\/p>\n
Garcia Ortiz is accused of leaking case files about businessman Alberto Gonzalez Amador, who is under investigation for alleged tax fraud and is the partner of Isabel Diaz Ayuso, Madrid’s influential right-wing leader.<\/p>\n
Ayuso’s conservative Popular Party (PP) has accused Garcia Ortiz — appointed by Sanchez’s Socialist government in 2022 — of orchestrating the leak to damage her, a prominent figure on the Spanish right who has at times been tipped for a national leadership role.<\/p>\n
“I did not leak the email,” Garcia Ortiz, 57,\u00a0told the trial in the Supreme Court when he took the stand, adding the allegations were “defamation”.<\/p>\n
“Truth is never leaked, it defends itself,” he said.<\/p>\n
In 2024, media reported that Gonzalez Amador had proposed a plea deal with the public prosecutor’s office in which he would admit to alleged tax offences in exchange for avoiding a trial and jail.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court began investigating Garcia Ortiz following a complaint by Gonzalez Amador, who is accused of defrauding 350,000 euros (around $400,000) from the treasury in 2020 and 2021 as his health company’s earnings soared during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
– ‘Destroyed me’ –<\/p>\n
Gonzalez Amador is demanding four years in jail for Garcia Ortiz and 300,000 euros for “the moral damage caused”.<\/p>\n
His lawyers have described him as the target of a campaign by the Madrid regional government to distract from Gonzalez Amador’s legal troubles and protect Ayuso.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez Amador told the trial he wanted to reach an agreement with the prosecutor’s office “quickly and quietly” to avoid harming Ayuso.<\/p>\n
“With the publication of the email, I became the confessed criminal of the Kingdom of Spain! I was dead!” Gonzalez Amador said last week.<\/p>\n
Garcia Ortiz “had publicly killed me. He had completely destroyed me,” he added.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have requested Garcia Ortiz’s acquittal, and Sanchez has repeatedly said he believes the attorney general is innocent.<\/p>\n
If convicted, Garcia Ortiz faces up to six years in prison and a ban on practising law.<\/p>\n
– ‘He is innocent’ –<\/p>\n
Several journalists who had access to a leaked email containing details of the proposed plea deal told the court they did not get it from Garcia Ortiz.<\/p>\n
Jose Precedo of the El Diario digital outlet, the journalist who first reported the correspondence, told the court Garcia Ortiz “never passed me a document in the 22 years of my career”.<\/p>\n
“I know he is innocent because I know the source, but I cannot reveal it due to professional secrecy,” Precedo added when he took the stand last week.<\/p>\n
The high-profile trial, which began on November 3, is set to conclude on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Separate corruption investigations targeting the prime minister’s wife, brother and two former Socialist heavyweights have threatened to topple Sanchez, who came to power in 2018 promising to clean up Spanish politics.<\/p>\n
The PP has repeatedly called for Sanchez’s resignation and a snap general election, accusing his minority government of widespread corruption.<\/p>\n
Sanchez has said the graft allegations against his wife and brother are part of a “smear campaign” set in motion by the right.<\/p>\n
He told a Senate committee last month that Socialist party funding was “absolutely clean”.<\/p>\n
rbj\/ds\/rlp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain’s top prosecutor denied that he leaked confidential legal information against the conservative opposition, as he took the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[156994,156996,2000,299,180073,180074,156997,5338,104,15985],"class_list":{"0":"post-566515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-alberto-gonzalez-amador","9":"tag-alvaro-garcia-ortiz","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-garcia-ortiz","13":"tag-gonzalez-amador","14":"tag-isabel-diaz-ayuso","15":"tag-pedro-sanchez","16":"tag-spain","17":"tag-supreme-court"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115539542214183769","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}