He Congress of Deputies will facilitate the delivery of the personal belongings that the former socialist deputy allegedly involved in the ‘Meditor case’, Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo, left in his office in the Lower House. The head of the Investigating Court number 4 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceres, has requested this Monday Meritxell Batet that provide “authorization and collaboration” for the delivery of these objects and the Presidency of Congress.
The magistrate, as recounted in her order, has already contacted the Special Commissioner of the Congress of Deputies to request information about these objects. From the Carrera de San Jerónimo they reported that the office of Fuentes Curbelo has been closed since the canary left his act of deputy.
On February 14, when the case broke out, the PSOE leadership, through Santos Cerdán, number three in the party, forced Fuentes Curbelo to leave the seat, and since then his office has not been awarded to any other deputy. Inside the cubicle remains the desktop computer that the chamber awarded to Bernardo Fuentes along with other documents and personal effects. The mobile phone that Congress handed over to the deputy upon his inauguration was already seized the day he was arrested.
Relations between the Judiciary and the Legislature are usually managed through the presidents of the Supreme Court and Congress, but in this case, according to sources consulted by Europa Press, this route will not be necessary because Fuentes Curbelo has left the seat. In any case, and by virtue of article 548 of the Criminal Procedure Law (LECrim), the registry of the Courts requires the authorization of the Presidency from the same.
Lorenzo-Cáceres has detailed that the National Police and the Technological Crimes Group will open an analysis and prepare the corresponding expert report computer equipment and any digital or analog storage device.
The case implicates Fuentes in several operations that, through meetings in the aforementioned office and parties with drugs and prostitutes, sought to obtain bribes from businessmen. In return, they promised to grant subsidies or withdraw sanctions, or threatened to order extensive inspections of their businesses.
Research has largely been built on wiretaps directed against the mediatorAntonio Navarro Tacoronte, who acted as an intermediary between the businessmen, on the one hand, and the leaders Fuentes Curbelo, Taishet Fuentes -nephew of the former deputy- and the Civil Guard Francisco Espinosa Navas, on the other.
Through an order, the investigating judge of the case has defended the proportionality of her request given that “there are a series of sources of evidence that cannot be accessed through alternative procedures that do not imply a temporary interference in the fundamental rights of the investigated “.
Likewise, the car indicates that “criminal evidence overcomes the barrier of mere conjectures or suspicions and they fully enter the field of rational indications of criminality of a crime of corruption, such as bribery, influence peddling, falsehood and belonging to an organized group, which would have been carried out within a criminal organization”.
The National Police, after learning that the office housed documents and devices that may be of interest to the investigation, last week required the judge to allow access to it. However, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office opposed the full registration of the office, hiding behind article 66.3 of the Spanish Constitution, according to which the Cortes Generales are “inviolable”but was in favor of the seizure of electronic devices.
