The National Court criticizes key paragraphs of the sentence that struck Mariano Rajoy

• Newspaper library: The National Court removes Judge De Prada from the court that will judge the 'box B' of the PP
• Profile: José Ricardo de Prada, the magistrate who triggered the motion of censure
• Judgment: The National Court condemns Barcenas to 33 years for money laundering and the PP for benefiting from Gürtel
• National Court. Question the "credibility" of Rajoy's testimony in the Gürtel case trial

The Plenary of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court concludes that the assessments made by Judge José Ricardo De Prada on the B box of the PP in Gürtel's sentence "destroy the necessary appearance of impartiality that every member of a court must meet of Justice".

According to the legal bases of the order for which he has agreed to remove him from the court that will judge the irregular financing of the party in the so-called trial of Los Papeles de Bárcenas De Prada "he took for granted the accreditation of several facts that were not strictly subject to prosecution."

All this in the process that investigated the first era of the plot led by the businessman Francisco Correa and that concluded with sentences that rose to the 52 years that were imposed on Correa or the 33 to which the former popular treasurer Luis was convicted Bárcenas.

The National Court emphasizes that «the explicit position of the magistrate in these matters objectively deprives him of the conditions of impartiality required».

It refers in its judicial resolution to the assessments made by the magistrate that led to the motion of censure that took the Government of the PP and caused the arrival of Pedro Sánchez to La Moncloa .

The Plenary of the Criminal Chamber recalls that, as "the particular vote formulated in Gürtel's ruling by Judge Ángel Hurtado already warned, there are passages from the introduction of the proven facts that were not necessary to introduce."

He then cites specific examples that he considers should never have been introduced in the judicial decision. In the first place, statements such as "a stable collaborative structure was woven between the Correa Group and the PP". Or, the most famous of all and that was used as a battering ram against the Government of Rajoy, that "an authentic and effective system of institutional corruption was created in parallel."

But the National Court also considers that there are not enough, because they were not subject to the Gürtel trial, assertions such as “other amounts went as finalist donations to the so-called party B box consisting of a financial and accounting structure parallel to the official one, existing at least since 1989 ».

De Prada abounded in this regard, still to be judged, adding that the «games were recorded informally, sometimes in simple handwritten sheets such as those corresponding to the defendant Bárcenas, which recorded income and expenses of the party or in other cases amounts delivered to relevant members of the party ».

In relation to these statements, which enter fully into the irregular financing of the PP, the Criminal Chamber endorses Hurtado's argument that «although these last aspects described are only to specify the context in which the facts that are the object of this prosecution are interwoven ", in reference to Gürtel ," but remaining outside its scope of knowledge, it would have been better if it did not say anything and, instead, had not included a paragraph that recognizes that it is outside its knowledge ». For all these elements, the order that separates De Prada considers that “the impartiality of the magistrate was compromised following the doctrine of the Constitutional Court” since its assertions “clearly deduce the position taken by this magistrate regarding several of the relevant issues ».

Issues "that were not strictly subject to prosecution in that first procedure concluded by sentence, but must be resolved in the subsequent one." And he adds that "in the strictly criminal sphere, the guarantees of impartiality must be further extreme".

In parallel, the National Court rejects as grounds for recusal the alleged intimate friendship of De Prada with the Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado, and with Gürtel's first instructor, Baltasar Garzón.

De Prada's car

The Criminal Chamber concludes that De Prada should never have added to Gürtel's sentence statements that the PP box B existed since 1989 because it has not yet been tried.

"The explicit position of the magistrate in these matters deprives him of the conditions of impartiality enforceable," argues the order.

The National Court criticizes that the magistrate "will take a stand on relevant issues" that have not yet been tried and will take him away from the court in the case of Los Papeles de Bárcenas .

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• PP
• Justice
• Mariano Rajoy
• National audience
• Baltasar Garzón
• Dolores Delgado
• Francisco Correa
• constitutional Court
• Pedro Sanchez
• Luis Barcenas
• Corruption

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