Start again. In the case opened by Banca Privada d’Andorra against Mariano Rajoy for the alleged maneuvers of his “patriotic police” it is again October 5. The Provincial Court of Madrid has come to agree this Thursday with the former president of the government when realizing that the request for International Judicial Assistance 61/2022 had not been returned (and completed) to the Pyrenean country but is still in the dependencies of the ministry, in Madrid.
This was the case, at least, until October 5, when the case entered a judicial labyrinth when considering the former president of the government (his former Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro, also accused along with a dozen former senior officials) also appealed. that their fundamental rights had been violated or could be violated.
Sources from the Ministry of Justice were unaware on the afternoon of this Thursday if the 61/2022 has actually been processed or not.
The Provincial Court of Madrid considered after several appeals and against appeals, that his request was meaningless, since the Request was already in Andorra or on the way to Andorra. But not. Rajoy’s defense appealed recently, pointing out that this was not the case, that the papers were still in Madrid, so that it was possible to analyze whether the rights of the former president were being violated. Now, the Provincial Court of Madrid agrees with him, and orders the delivery of the documentation to Andorra to be halted until it is analyzed whether this is pertinent.
The Provincial Court orders the competent court to have them as individuals in the procedure and to admit the appeals for reform in which both requested the non-processing of the rogatory letter.
Drawing on ironic prose, the court admits that it is unaware of “what the current situation of the rogatory commission is in its long and, apparently, stormy journey between the investigating court of Madrid and the court of Andorra, via the Ministry of Justice, being so in the era of the information society, it had not reached its destination in the three months since it was “returned” to the requesting court”. The court, for its part, does show speed, since it took just a day to rule since it received the opinion (favorable of Rajoy’s defense theses) from the public prosecutor’s office.
The complaint maintains that Rajoy, two of his ministers and various senior officers of the police leadership in 2014 and 2015 used blackmail, threats, coercion and extortion against the management of Banca Privada d’Andorra so that -violating bank secrecy- they give information about the accounts that politicians such as Jordi Pujol, Artur Mas and Oriol Junqueras supposedly had in that entity.
This complaint was filed in 2020 by the Institut de Drets Humans d’Andorra and admitted for processing last June. In addition to Rajoy, the defendants are the then Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro, and Interior Minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz; his secretary of state, Francisco Martínez; the general director of the National Police Corps, Ignacio Cosidó; the commissioners –retired- Eugenio Pino, José Manuel Villarejo and Marcelino Martín-Blas; Chief Police Inspectors Celestino Barroso and Bonifacio Díaz; and the commissioner Pedro Esteban, responsible for information services in Catalonia.
