The former Popular Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz has asked the National Court to put the Popular Party on the bench to respond financially for the Kitchen case.
Fernández Díaz is one of those accused of participating in the operation to steal compromising information for the party from former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas.
After the order in which the judge in the case sent the matter to trial, the defense of the former minister has adhered to the appeals that ask that the PP not be left out, but rather that it be judged under the figure of a participant. lucrative. This means that, in the event of a conviction, the public money spent on the operation could be claimed from the PP.
The order to open the oral trial has been appealed, among others, by the Secretary of State during that operation, Francisco Martínez – also an accused and former PP deputy – and by the PSOE, which exercises the popular accusation. The two parties have asked the Criminal Court to correct Judge Manuel García Castellón’s decision not to send the PP to trial. Fernández Díaz supports both resources.
“From the factual account of the accusation documents, it is clear that the origin and epicenter of the allegedly criminal acts was espionage and the theft from the Bárcenas family of information supposedly detrimental to the interests of the PP, always for their benefit and used to reserved funds for such purposes. Being this way and requesting a conviction on the grounds of civil liability, which is accepted and reflected in the opening order itself, it is obvious, coherent and necessary to include the PP as a lucrative participant,” says the document presented by the defense of the former minister.
On October 13, in the same order in which the oral trial was opened, the investigating judge rejected as “extemporaneous” the PSOE’s request to hold the PP civilly liable, adding that it did not specify the amount or the facts, “apparenting a lack of relationship between the facts that support the claim and the person against whom the civil action is brought”.
The appeal against that decision presented by the former Secretary of State, to which the former minister adheres, considered “absolutely logical” that if he committed the crime “to favor the PP and there is a possible civil sentence, or even that the suspension of “A hypothetical conviction may require payment of civil liability, the more potential perpetrators there are, the greater guarantees of survival [Francisco Martínez] has.”
For its part, the PSOE appeal disagrees that its request referring to the PP was out of time. And in addition to asking that the PP face the slightly more than 50,000 euros of reserved funds that were given to Bárcenas’ driver so that he could spy on him, he demands to add the expense involved in the participation of at least 70 agents.
