The PSOE, acting as a popular accuser in the Kitchen case, is once again attempting to bring the PP to court as a legal entity for the operation carried out in 2013 within the Ministry of the Interior and the National Police to spy on the former popular treasurer Luis Bárcenas with the alleged objective of stealing documentation that could harm his party. The socialists have filed a document in the National Court to declare null the resolution that rejected this possibility. The PSOE wants the PP to be held responsible as a beneficiary for the use of reserved funds for this irregular operation, as well as for the expenses derived from the public resources (human and technical) used. This is the third attempt by the PSOE to bring the PP to court. The investigating judge Manuel García-Castellón and the Criminal Chamber have already rejected it, as has the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office. However, the socialists believe that this position “restricts” and “diminishes” their rights as popular accusers, and violates the right to try to recover the public funds used.
After the Criminal Chamber rejected their attempt to prosecute the PP as a legal entity on March 8, the PSOE has changed strategy and requested the nullification of the ruling that dismissed their claim. The party argues, among other aspects, that their right to effective judicial protection has been violated, due to “infringement in its aspect of the right to obtain a reasonable answer with the proscription of all arbitrariness of public powers”; and their right to “equality of arms” in the case. The PSOE’s battle to bring the PP to trial has been going on for a year and a half. In their indictment filed in the fall of 2022, the socialists first raised this possibility, considering the conservative party as a beneficiary of the plot. The operation against the former treasurer was activated after the publication of Bárcenas’ papers on the B box of the PP and the corruption surrounding the companies of Francisco Correa. Therefore, Judge García-Castellón has sent 11 people to the dock, including Jorge Fernández Díaz, Interior Minister under Mariano Rajoy; Francisco Martínez, former Secretary of State for Security; and Eugenio Pino, former Deputy Director of Operations of the National Police.
However, in October 2023, when opening trial against the former leadership of the Interior and the Police, the judge dismissed the request to also bring the PP to trial. The judge considered it had been introduced “ex novo”. According to his ruling, “up to” that “moment”, no claim had been made against the party, and following the Supreme Court’s doctrine, it was “untimely”, especially since it was done “without specifying the amount, nor the specific facts and actions from which said responsibility emanates”. The PSOE then appealed that decision, but the Criminal Chamber also rejected it on March 8, although for different reasons than the judge. According to this court, the socialists are not “authorized” to claim civil liability from the PP: “It is only the responsibility of the public prosecutor or the victims of the crime committed, not the popular accuser, whose intervention in the process necessarily focuses on the criminal sphere”.
The socialists do not share this interpretation, and believe that the Chamber’s decision “prohibits” the popular accuser’s right “to demand compensation for diverted public funds, which have been taken from the public services of all citizens”. “A constitutional reading of the criminal process is being practiced that is harmful to the fundamental right to effective judicial protection,” adds the document presented by the PSOE, dated March 29 and accessed by EL PAÍS. The socialist document, technically called an “annulment incident,” concludes: “The Supreme Court’s doctrine has not been immutable regarding the scope and limits of popular accusations. It is well known that the criteria followed until the renowned precedent known as the Botín doctrine were amended, or complemented if you will, with the successive interpretations made in the Atutxa doctrine and later with the Nóos case. From these precedents, the popular accusation is recognized for exercising criminal action, regardless of the prosecuting attorney’s absolving position and the rest of the accusing parties. However, always when the object of the trial involves offenses that affect legal assets known as plurioffensive, diffuse, or supra-individual”.
