The commission that will officially start next Monday in Congress to investigate purchases of medical supplies during the pandemic will ultimately have neither judges nor prosecutors despite being initially included in the list of 134 appearances agreed upon yesterday. The recommendations made by the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz, have been taken into account by the parliamentary majority of the investiture. Therefore, their summonses will be revoked in the coming days.
It makes “no sense” for judges or magistrates to testify to investigative commissions “about cases they are hearing.” “And the same principle applies to prosecutors,” Bolaños reprimanded this afternoon after the agreements signed by the socialist parliamentary group with the different investiture partners -Sumar, ERC, Junts, EH Bildu, PNV, Podemos and BNG-.
The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, has joined Bolaños’s reprimand, ensuring that “bringing judges and prosecutors to the level of commissions is not the most appropriate procedure because they have their job to do.” Two warnings that supported the anger conveyed, through a letter, by the State Attorney General’s Office to the president of the commission himself.
With the unrest made official, the first vice president of the Government, María Jesús Montero, has calmed things down by explaining that “it was not the calling of the PSOE” to summon prosecutors to the investigation commission on the purchase of masks, but she believes that it must be “respected” the appearances that the parties may make.
Montero, visiting the April Fair in Seville, has tried to exonerate the socialist group in Congress by ensuring that, in view of the different lists proposed by the PSOE – including that of EH Bildu that did request the appearance of Luzón, opted to incorporate the bulk of requests into a single list. Hence, three prosecutors were initially included: Alejandro Luzón, head of Anti-Corruption; Ignacio de Lucas, prosecutor of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office; and Codruta Kovesi, chief prosecutor of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The socialist imbalance has been taken advantage of by Alberto Núñez Feijóo who has attacked the President of the Government: “If his word has no value, the Government ceases to have value in Spain.”
In statements to journalists from Girona, the leader of the PP has criticized the summons, calling it “regrettable that Mr. Sánchez and Mr. (Félix) Bolaños have said actively and passively that they were not going to accept that any prosecutor or judge appear. in investigative commissions in Congress and yesterday they signed the appearance of several prosecutors in Congress,” he denounced.
“If the word of the president of our Government has no value, the Government ceases to have value in Spain,” he stated.
