• Courts. The judge of 'Gürtel' did not sleep, "he was absorbed in his thoughts"
  • Judgment: The National Court condemns Barcenas to 33 years for money laundering and the PP for benefiting from Gürtel

The Supreme Court begins to deliberate on the 42 appeals filed against the ruling of the Second Section of the National Court that sentenced the main leaders of the Gürtel plot to sentences of up to 51 years in prison for the First Period (1999-2005 ) of this network of corruption. In total, more than 400 grounds for the sentence that struck down the Government of Mariano Rajoy have been appealed by the parties, including the Office of the High Court Prosecutor .

The sentence, whose presentation has corresponded to the conservative magistrate Juan Ramón Berdugo , will begin to be debated this Tuesday by the magistrates behind closed doors. Together with the speaker, the Chamber is composed of magistrates of various sensibilities Antonio del Moral, Andrés Palomo, Susana Polo and Eduardo de Porres .

According to legal sources to EL MUNDO, of all the reasons that will be analyzed, two of them have special relevance for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), affecting two magistrates who made up the court that condemned the leaders of the Gürtel . These are judges José Ricardo de Prada and Julio de Diego , now questioned by the defenses.

On the one hand, the Supreme Court will have to rule on the performance of the progressive judge De Prada, who, in the words of the Criminal Chamber of the Hearing, "took for granted the accreditation of several facts that were not strictly subject to prosecution." He was the author of phrases where it was said that in the PP "an authentic and effective system of institutional corruption was created in parallel." Last October, the Hearing concluded that the progressive magistrate should never have incorporated into Gürtel's sentence statements that the Popular Party (PP) box B existed since 1989 because it has not yet been tried. Those maxims were the trigger for the PSOE to file a motion of censure in Congress and get the Rajoy Executive down. Several of the defense, including that of the PP itself, accuses José Ricardo de Prada of not being an impartial judge and of even having "helped" to change the government in favor of the PSOE.

Cause of nullity

On the other hand, the Criminal Chamber must address in its sentence the fact that Judge De Diego fell asleep on multiple occasions during the course of the oral hearing. The defenses accuse him of having maintained an absolutely passive attitude and lack of interest in the trial. Several of those convicted filed a complaint against him before the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) -which did not prosper when he was filed- for considering that his attitude was improper of a magistrate of the National Court that judged people who were facing penalties requested by the different accusations that exceeded the "1,000 years of deprivation of liberty".

If any of the reasons for the defenses against the actions of these two magistrates were to prosper, it would be cause for annulment of the sentence issued by the Hearing and the oral hearing should be repeated.

Likewise, the different sources of the Chamber consulted explain that the rapporteur Juan Ramón Berdugo has been working on the draft sentence for months, so they expect that, although the deliberations will last several sessions, the sentence will be notified in the spring.

Throughout 1,687 pages of sentence, the National Court sentenced 29 of the 37 defendants in the trial that lasted for more than a year. Among them, the leader of the plot Gürtel , Francisco Correa, 51 years and 11 months in prison; his number two , Pablo Crespo , 37 and a half years in jail, the former treasurer of the Luis Bárcenas Popular Party, 33 years and four months; and his wife, Rosalia Iglesias , sentenced to 15 years and one month in prison. For its part, the Popular Party was condemned as responsible for a lucrative title to pay 245,492.8 euros for profit from the network led by Correa.

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  • PP
  • Supreme Court
  • Mariano Rajoy
  • PSOE
  • National audience
  • European Court of Human Rights
  • Francisco Correa
  • General Council of the Judiciary
  • Corruption
  • Justice

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