David Sánchez, brother of the President of the Government, considers that his summons as a defendant on January 9 is “surprising” because Judge Beatriz Biedma – who is investigating him for influence peddling, prevarication, embezzlement and tax fraud – has not proven the evidence that justify their court appearance. This is made clear in the document in which he supports the appeal of the Prosecutor’s Office against that decision of the instructor.
In these allegations, presented yesterday and to which LA RAZÓN has had access, his defense complains to the First Section of the Provincial Court of Badajoz that if he persists with his summons, the magistrate will violate his right to effective judicial protection and will cause helplessness. And, he emphasizes, his summons is based “on what the Prosecutor’s Office rigorously believes is not verified,” which is why he replies to the judge – who argued that he must appear like any citizen under judicial investigation – that this decision “has nothing to do with the guarantee of equality of all citizens before the law”. Biedma, he says, “supplants” the necessary motivation required to summon an investigator to testify “for alleged dogmas of statistics or forensic use.”
His lawyer defends that David Sánchez – whose hiring by the Badajoz Provincial Council in 2017 is being investigated by Biedma – must know the evidence against him before going to court. “If we defer informing those investigated” (the president of the Provincial Council, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, is also cited) “of the events attributed to him and his alleged participation in them at the time of his appearance in court – he warns – his effective defenselessness will be produced”, so his accusation “will have to be described as surprising”. And it makes it clear that if this is not the case, their fundamental right to defense would be harmed because “not even those arrested for flagrante delicto are placed in such a situation of material defenselessness.” But it goes further and considers that if Biedma does not safeguard “that and other constitutional guarantees”, she would be obliged to agree to “the suspension of the procedural act.”
The defense of David Azagra, stage name of David Sánchez, affirms that what is questioned is not so much that the brother of the President of the Government has the opportunity to “explain himself”, but rather “the obvious lack of motivation” of the reasons used by the judge. to summon him to testify as investigated. And, he insists, both David Sánchez and the rest of the defendants “will have to know precisely what they are facing before sitting on the bench at the headquarters of the jurisdictional body, and not merely infer it.”
His lawyer refutes the argument that, like any citizen under investigation, he is obliged to appear to testify, an invocation that he calls “confusing” because “many criminal proceedings are closed without having heard the defendant or the accused, without this causing any notable consequences.” , among other reasons because there is no rule of positive law that prevents it.” And in any case, he states, “if the statements of the defendants constitute such a frequent and even healthy procedural event, we do not understand why the Investigating Court has not previously agreed on the admissibility of the appearance.”
David Sánchez once again invokes the latest report from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) to defend his innocence and refers to those police conclusions (which rule out his possession of 1.4 million euros in shares, as stated in the initial complaint by Manos attribute alleged illicit enrichment) a “turning point in the global understanding of this procedure”, “a before and after”.
In fact, he believes that this opinion of the Civil Guard “constitutes a true paradigm of the tendentiousness with which the complaint was written” that gave rise to the procedure, to the extent that – he emphasizes – “the mention of the banking actions of our client and his dreamed millionaire profits” have turned out to be “erroneous” after “the mandatory bank certifications” sent by BBVA to the court.
His lawyer emphasizes that the facts related to this UCO report “are patently strange” to David Sánchez, because “it has nothing to do” with “the creation of a senior management position” (that of coordinator of conservatories first, in October 2016, which would later be awarded to him in August of the following year, and with that of head of the Performing Arts Office, which he would hold from 2022 without any competition). “It has nothing to do with the preparation of a report justifying its allocation, nor with the opinions that may have been expressed about its relevance,” he adds, just as it is unrelated to the modification of the List of Jobs that validated the change of name of his position, “aside from the fact that it is also unknown what is criminal about it.” In any case, he emphasizes, “not a single mention of him appears in what has to do with administrative decision-making.”
David Sánchez closes ranks with the Prosecutor’s Office after Biedma reproached him for appealing his summons as an investigator, something he called “absolutely extraordinary” for not defending the accused. For his lawyer, such a consideration “extraordinarily weakens the judicial discourse” and demands “respect for the constitutional and ordinary prerogatives that in a democratic state and the rule of law are assigned to a citizen who holds the status of being investigated.” Something that, he assures, the Prosecutor’s Office can appeal. “What is required to be able to fight a judicial resolution is the fact of being a party, and the Prosecutor’s Office is, with all legitimacy.”
According to her criteria, the judge resorts to arguments “with a formalist bias” to “deviate the authentic object of the Prosecutor’s Office’s claim” with her appeal. And he reproaches him that while he “endorsed” his judicial decisions “nothing was questioned, but now he is.”