The Prosecutor’s Office maneuvers for the second time to try not to investigate whether Santos Cerdán committed a crime of false testimony by denying his links with Koldo García and Víctor de Aldama during the appearance in the Senate “Koldo commission” that he starred in in April 2024.
In her appeal for reform against the opening of the case, the prosecutor takes refuge in the fact that the duty to tell the truth before a parliamentary commission cannot take precedence over her fundamental right not to testify against herself and not to confess guilt, which is enshrined in article 24.3 of the Constitution.
“The person summoned to testify does not lose his constitutional rights by appearing before the parliamentary investigation commission,” he defends in his argument, to which LA RAZÓN has had access for the first time.
The representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office asks Judge Lidia Paloma to take into account that the former “number three” of the PSOE, currently, “cannot be in a worse position before the courts of justice” and that, after giving a statement in the Lower House, “he was declared under investigation a few months later.”
Ferraz’s last Secretary of Organization was indicted by the Supreme Court in the framework of the “Koldo case” one year and two months after he answered the senators’ questions. Despite this, the prosecutor defends that he “already anticipated his formal accusation that finally took place” and that led him to be in provisional prison for almost five months until he was released yesterday from the Soto del Real prison in Madrid.
He assures that Cerdán’s case is analogous to that of a person who “testifies in a trial knowing that, later, he will be investigated,” and, therefore, cannot incur criminal responsibilities, given that “he lies to defend himself from future accusation.”
For the prosecutor, there is no place to investigate Cerdán for false testimony in the Investigative Court number 24 of Madrid because “the object of the falsehood” is “exclusively his self-defense.”
To reinforce its thesis, the Public Ministry cites jurisprudence in which the Supreme Court establishes that “requiring truthfulness from the witness in a situation that criminally compromises him would be forcing him to renounce his right to the presumption of innocence, which must have primacy.”
Already at the beginning of October the prosecutor took the side of inadmissing the complaint that Hazte Oír filed against Cerdán. Despite this, the magistrate decided to admit it to proceedings and asked the Congress of Deputies to confirm that he was no longer a deputy and, therefore, has free rein to investigate him. As this newspaper reported, the Lower House has already stated that this Navarrese does not currently occupy any of the 350 seats in the chamber. The formal indictment order has yet to be issued.
The instructor, contrary to the fiscal criterion, agreed with the complaining association that the former socialist leader “would have substantially failed to tell the truth” when presenting his answers in the Senate, a “clear deviation between the narrative” he made and the “material reality” of the dimension of his relationship with the former right-hand man of José Luis Ábalos and the businessman.
Cerdán denied, in response to their honors, that he had contacted Koldo between 2021 and 2023. But the “content of the report prepared by the Civil Guard” on the WhatsApp recordings and audios exchanged by the former Government advisor showed that the reality was different.
Yes, he knew, and he denied it, as Judge Paloma highlighted, that Koldo exercised “intermediary functions or functions aimed at obtaining lucrative ends” with the acquisition of the masks by the central Executive, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands. He would also have lied when he denied that he “had given instructions” to Koldo to “benefit certain companies in public awards.” We will have to see what the judge decides.