Madrid’s Public Prosecutor General Almudena Lastra appeared before the Supreme Court this Thursday to expose allegations that the leak of Alberto González Amador’s confession came from the Public Ministry. According to people involved in the case, during his court appearance, Lastra said he directly asked the attorney general if he was the one who leaked emails from Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner, saying, “That doesn’t matter right now.” “No,” Alvaro said. Garcia Ortiz. Prosecutor Julián Salto, who investigated and accused the businessman, accused Alberto González Amador’s first lawyer of leaking confidential emails from the prosecutor’s office.
In front of Judge Ángel Hurtado, they repeated the story they had already told while the case was being processed at the Madrid High Court. That is, on the night of March 13th, the Attorney General’s Office demanded that prosecutors explain their responsibility for the mail crossing. Lawyers for Julián Sarto and Alberto González Amador argued: The reason for this, as both men have repeatedly stated, is that several media outlets that night published biased or completely false information about the case and the actions of the public prosecutor’s office.
Lastra has spoken out multiple times about his anger at the time, both over the incident’s data breach and the statement that was ultimately released on the morning of March 14th. He had numerous arguments with several members of the attorney general’s office, even going so far as to directly ask Alvaro García Ortiz if he had leaked the emails, to which he replied, “That’s not important right now.”
Julián Sarto also echoed his version of events, telling how he had to manage to send an email to the attorney general’s office during a soccer game. Prosecutors reiterated Miguel Ángel Rodríguez’s statement that one of the emails in the case, signed by Sarto himself, was obtained from the hands of Alberto González Amador’s lawyer and distributed with the businessman’s permission. I admitted it. to various media. In the Supreme Court, Sarto accused his lawyer of breaching his duty of confidentiality.
The prosecutor who brought charges against Alberto González
Julián Sarto is a prosecutor specializing in economic crimes. Investigation against Alberto González Amador He then blamed the businessman, several of his partners, and their companies. He was the recipient of an email sent in February 2024 by a lawyer for Ayuso’s partner. confess his tax crimes and propose an agreement. A month later, Prosecutor Sarto sent back that communication, sending them the complaint they had filed and reminding them that if the agreement was still on the table, it was a viable option.
The civil servant had already declared himself a defendant in the Madrid High Court, when the case had not yet been referred to the Attorney General and the public prosecutor’s office was analyzing statements in which he tried to deny information from El Mundo. Ta. It gave a distorted version of their communication. He explained that on the night of March 13, while he was watching a soccer match, he received a call from Pilar Rodríguez, a public prosecutor for the state of Madrid, asking for emails he had exchanged with González Amador’s lawyer.
In the version he accepted as a witness today, he stressed that he was limited to complying with his statutory duty to notify his superiors about ongoing investigations and denied any involvement in the leaks to the media. He also acknowledged that the information was published and disseminated by various media outlets. By Miguel Angel Rodriguez himself That was false. The proposed agreement came not from the prosecutor’s office but from Ayuso’s partners, and in no case was it withdrawn by “order from above.”
Almudena Lastra, Madrid’s chief prosecutor and boss at Sarto’s public prosecutor’s office, requested all emails and finally released a statement on the morning of March 14 denying this information. Former members of the Judicial Council had already testified as witnesses in Superior Court, testifying to conflicts with the attorney general’s office over the management of the then-current information crisis. She said she never agreed with the contents of that statement. She said the leak made her so furious that the attorney general ordered the information published.
Lastra criticized in his appearance that the first leak of the night was an email from one of the prosecutors, Julián Sarto, to González Amador’s defense attorney.
Lawsuit against the Attorney General
The case that the Supreme Court has been pursuing since mid-October against the Madrid attorney general and the state prosecutor over the leaked confession of Alberto González Amador has gained new momentum in recent weeks under the direction of Judge Ángel Hurtado. are. The judge called Álvaro García Ortiz himself to testify. January 29th next year He also extended the charges to one of his closest collaborators in the Public Ministry, Deputy Prosecutor Diego Villafañe of the Technical Secretariat.
The lecturer is convinced that the three indicted prosecutors devised a strategy to leak and disseminate confidential data on the tax evasion case of Alberto González Amador, with the aim of damaging the President of the Community of Madrid. In a recent subpoena, the judge reiterated information provided by Juan Lobato, former general secretary of the Metropolitan PSOE. Suspicions extend to Moncloa as well. A leak from the public prosecutor’s office revealed that he participated in this strategy.
The judge was based above all on a report by the Central Business Unit that analyzed messages exchanged between March 12 and March 14 by Pilar Rodríguez, public prosecutor for the state of Madrid, with colleagues and superiors in the public ministry, including the attorney general. . . Messages that the attorney general deleted when he changed his phone number shortly after the case began, and messages that did not provide conclusive data about whether any of the defendants had leaked the emails or issued a filtering order.
The magistrate also heard statements from eight journalists, two of whom said they had access to emails from Julián Sarto before the attorney general obtained them. According to the judge, these testimonies are not sufficient to distort the evidence that the judge believes Alvaro García Ortiz is most responsible for the breach.
