The top prosecutor of Madrid, Almudena Lastra, has revealed in the Supreme Court the urgency of the State Attorney General both for receiving on the night of March 13 of last year the emails between the lawyer of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s boyfriend and Julián Salto, the prosecutor who was investigating Alberto González Amador for tax fraud, and for, the next day, a note was published revealing the details of the negotiation to reach a conformity agreement.
Lastra suspected, once he confirmed, that Pilar Rodríguez, the provincial chief prosecutor of Madrid, had finally sent the emails to Álvaro García Ortiz, which would end up being published, as happened minutes later with the key communication of February 2 in which the businessman’s defense recognized the tax fraud to facilitate an agreement that would considerably reduce the Prosecutor’s request for conviction. “I was stunned,” recalled the witness, who added that once she learned this fact from Rodríguez herself, she told her “literally”: “Pilar, they are going to leak them.”
“They were not hours to be sending emails. I told him to go home and not do anything. I told him several times,” he stated in his statement as a witness on the first day of the trial for revealing secrets to García Ortiz, who faces a possible sentence of four to six years in prison and a maximum of twelve years of disqualification.
Some words that, however, Pilar Rodríguez questioned, denying that he warned her of possible leaks. “A little light would have gone on in my brain if someone said something like that to me,” he stated in court before replying that he had no conversations about it with Lastra.
Once with this information in his possession, in his eagerness to demonstrate that the offer of a pact came from the defense of García Ortiz and that there was no order to stop him because he was the partner of the president of the Community of Madrid, the attorney general tried to speak on several occasions with Lastra early the next morning, urging him via WhatsApp to publish the note from the Prosecutor’s Office as soon as possible to “win the story.” Finally, they both spoke and Lastra did not hold her tongue, as she told the Court, still with a hint of indignation. “I didn’t even say good morning,” he recalled of that conversation. “You’ve leaked the emails,” he snapped.
“That doesn’t matter now”
A harsh accusation, and even more so in the case of his highest hierarchical superior, which García Ortiz nevertheless did not refute. “That doesn’t matter now. We have to get the grade as soon as possible,” he says he replied. Some words that caused a gesture of disbelief from García Ortiz on the stands. That reluctance to deny it surprised him. “It stuck in my soul, because I did care that the emails had been leaked,” he said when asked by the lawyer of the Foro Libertad y Alternativa Foundation, Fernando García Capelo.
“I was in the car and I couldn’t hear him well,” he recalled, but “he kept insisting.” Lastra did not understand “where the rush was” to make that statement public and just wanted some time to “read the note and the emails.” After speaking with his press officer, who was “absolutely furious” and threatened to resign if that note was published, he set about reviewing it. “He sent it to me and I didn’t even finish reading it. When I saw the first paragraph, I didn’t continue reading it.” For the chief prosecutor of Madrid, it was unacceptable and for this reason it ended up being distributed under the letterhead of the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Madrid, given that Lastra was aware that it was the attorney general with Pilar Rodríguez who had agreed to it.
The witness emphasized that to refute the version that it was the Prosecutor’s Office who had proposed the pact to Ayuso’s boyfriend, and not the other way around as really happened on February 2, it was enough to have made public “any information that did not reveal the defense strategy.” “You just had to have explained that: that it was a conformity like any other.” “I do not believe it is our role to reveal anyone’s defense strategy,” he remarked before explaining that the Prosecutor’s Office he directs has “never” previously published a similar note.
“I have no obligation to delete anything”
Lastra also referred – asked by González Amador’s lawyer, Gabriel Rodríguez Ramos – in case she had the obligation to delete her messages (García Ortiz hid behind the existence of a security protocol to justify the deletion of the messages from her mobile phone on the same day that the Supreme Court decided to investigate it in October of last year). “None,” he replied bluntly. “I have no obligation to delete anything. In fact, I keep them.” “There is a data protection guide that advises us to empty the mailboxes, but not for security reasons, but for capacity,” he added.
And when asked by Ignacio de Luis, from ICAM, one of the popular accusations, he said that in recent years he has changed his cell phone “many times” (the attorney general changed his cell phone only a week after being charged), but he clarified that when he does so “the entire cloud passes and I still have the call record since I have been a prosecutor for the Community of Madrid.”
Pilar Rodríguez and her “a little bit of cyanide”
A version of the events from which Pilar Rodríguez distanced herself. The chief provincial prosecutor of Madrid told the Court that “in no way” was there any action “clandestinely” when claiming those emails to prepare the public note that was disseminated on March 14. After accusing Lastra of lying by stating that he reproached him for having sent the emails to García Ortiz because “they are going to leak them,” he said that on the night of March 13 – when the alleged leak occurred that has brought the attorney general to the bench – he explained what the head of the Public Ministry was referring to when he claimed the last email (the one on March 12 published by “El Mundo” that implied that it was the Prosecutor’s Office who had the hand of Ayuso’s boyfriend to close an agreement).
“We already had some emails, but the one that was being distorted in the press was the one from March 12. It was necessary to have that email to understand the others. Until the attorney general had all the information, we did not understand what was happening.” “It is an expression,” he stressed, that was intended to show that “we already have all the information and we understand what is happening.”
Regarding his comment to García Ortiz when he asked him for his assessment of the Prosecutor’s Office note – “it makes you want to put a little cyanide” – he attributed it to the fact that hours before he had been “enduring invectives” from the president of the Community of Madrid “calling into question my professionalism.” It was, he said, “a relief.”
The procedure against Begoña Gómez that no one reported about
Regarding the protocol for deleting messages in the Prosecutor’s Office, he responded to the Manos Cleans lawyer, Víctor Soriano, that the general rule is “to eliminate those from procedures that are not in progress”, although I ended up admitting that “each of us does it according to our knowledge and understanding.” Despite referring to an internal instruction from 2019, he specified that the State Attorney General’s Office does not give “direct orders” in this regard. We are the ones responsible for deleting or not deleting.”
In his question period, APIF’s lawyer, Juan Antonio Frago, asked him if he checked whether any of the 499 people who, according to the Attorney General’s Office, could have accessed the folder where González Amador’s file was included (and, therefore, the emails) really did so. Given his refusal, he listed the cases of members of that list, around thirty according to the popular accusation, who had already died, had been separated from the service or belonged to other units of the Prosecutor’s Office, making it materially impossible for them to see those emails.
During her testimony, Pilar Rodríguez insisted that she had to inform “up to the minute” of the existence of proceedings that affected relevant figures, and she expressly referred to the fact that only a few days before, on March 8, she had been informed of the possible existence of proceedings against Begoña Gómez in the Plaza de Castilla courts. Which led him to verify, he said, that there were two open ones, one from 2023 in the Investigative Court number 3 of which he had not been aware until that moment and another in number 27, very incipient. He reported both to his hierarchical superiors on March 11 of last year.