The Supreme Court has turned Álvaro García Ortiz into the first Attorney General of the State formally investigated by the judiciary. The Criminal Chamber has admitted the reasoned exposition sent by a judge in Madrid and has opened a case for the disclosure of secrets to the head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the dissemination of a statement following a complaint filed by Alberto González Amador, partner of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The case opened against García Ortiz focuses on the publication, by the Prosecutor’s Office, of a press release that denied a rumor spread by Díaz Ayuso’s team after learning that the Public Prosecutor’s Office had reported his partner for defrauding over 350,000 euros to the Tax Office. Hours after that complaint came to light, on March 13, El Mundo published that the Prosecutor’s Office had offered González Amador a deal via email. The Popular Party was trying to sell the idea that this offer, later withdrawn, was part of a sort of blackmail for political purposes. In response to the avalanche of requests for information to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office issued a statement on the morning of March 14 explaining that it was actually González Amador’s lawyer who, over a month earlier, had tried to reach that agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, a common procedure where the accused admit their crimes (Ayuso’s partner admitted to committing two tax offenses) in exchange for a reduced penalty. The press release is the one that, according to Ayuso’s partner, constitutes a crime of disclosure of secrets because it included personal data. The Prosecutor’s version is opposed because, according to its officials, the press release did not reveal anything that was not already known. This was the main argument on which the Deputy Attorney General of the Supreme Court, María Ángeles Sánchez Conde, based the document she presented to the Criminal Chamber in which she opposed opening a case against her boss, who has taken responsibility for the dissemination of the press release issued by the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office.
