The Prosecutor’s Office Supreme Court (TS) He sided with the inadmissibility of the complaint filed by Hazte Oír against the president of the Congress of Deputies, Francina Armengolto request that he be investigated for false testimony.
Specifically, for having denied during his appearance before the “Koldo commission” of the Senate that he knew Victor de Aldamadespite the fact that it was later revealed that they had had a conversation on WhatsApp when she was socialist president of the Balearic Islands.
The lieutenant prosecutor of the high court, María Ángeles Sánchez Condeissued, at the request of the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, a report in which it defends that Francina Armengol did not incur criminal responsibilities. He presented two fundamental reasons.
The “number two” of the State Attorney General’s Office assures that “the fact of knowing or not knowing a person of certain relevance, who has subsequently been identified as a corrupting nexus”, such as Aldama in the “Koldo case”, “is unimportant if no public contract has been concluded” between both parties and, even if it were concluded, there would have to be indications of irregularity to consider that Armengol could have incurred a criminal offense.
He also wants the Criminal Chamber to take into account that, “even if said meeting and Aldama’s intervention in it existed”, if the president of the Lower House denied knowing him, after being asked about it in a parliamentary committee, “it could not have entailed a manifest deviation between the person appearing and the material reality.”
Since it could be – explains the lieutenant prosecutor of the TS – “a mere forgetfulness, given the characteristics of the position held”, president of the Balearic archipelago, “which involved attendance at a multitude of meetings with a multitude of people.”
This possibility is relevant for Sánchez Conde, who points out that “he could determine that he did not know or forgot the identity of one of the multiple people with whom he had interacted years before his intervention in the commission was carried out” on June 7, 2024.
Regarding the capture of the WhatsApp messages that the businessman and Armengol exchanged, collected in a journalistic report, Sánchez Conde warns that is “inane for evidentiary purposes”according to jurisprudence, and, even more so, when – it points out – “it does not provide any information about the identity of the alleged interlocutor”, nor the date on which they would have maintained this communication in question.
Regarding the second link between the two outlined by the association in its complaint, the statements in which Aldama stated that he met with her and the then president of Air Europa (Juan José Hidalgo), the Prosecutor’s Office believes that “it would be ratified by unidentified sources in the environment” of Armengol and – from the point of view of the Public Ministry – this fact “would not prove a relationship between the defendant (president of Congress) and Aldama.”
The prosecutor relies on the fact that “the intervention of the latter is limited as a mere companion of a third party in a meeting, without allowing the falsity of the testimony to be affirmed” during his statement in the investigation commission of the upper house. “Dismiss any relationship with said individual,” Sánchez Conde concludes in his writing.
All of this, in the opinion of the lieutenant prosecutor of the high court, is sufficient to resolve that no principle of evidence has been provided to support the facts alleged in the complaint, that is, the prior relationship, knowledge and trust between Armengol and Aldama that would lead to the falsity of the point exposed in their appearance.
It is also not overlooked that the sale of the masks by the “Koldo plot” to various public administrations, including the Balearic Islands, are the subject of investigation both in the Central Court of Instruction number 2 of the National Court as in the Supreme Court for the entitled. “Without Armengol being investigated,” the prosecutor notes in this sense.
Aldama revealed last June on the television program “Horizonte”, as stated in the Hazte Oír complaint, that he had a meeting with the socialist leader in Palma, when he was president of the Balearic Islands, and that sources close to Armengol had confirmed that he met with Globalia and that in said meetings the owner of the business group, Juan José Hidalgo, had, among other companions, Aldama.
According to Sánchez Conde, these public statements by the businessman were used by the complaining entity to show “clearly that they did know each other and that Armengol knowingly failed to tell the truth in his statement.” A thesis that the lieutenant prosecutor does not share. Hazte Oír presented an extension with new evidence of the alleged false testimony.