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Madrid, March 28 (EFE).- The European Prosecutor’s Office has warned the State Attorney General’s Office that it has preferential jurisdiction to investigate the mask contract for which the brother of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, was paid, and has suggested the possibility appeal to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office has addressed the Spanish Public Prosecutor’s Office in these terms on the day on which it must decide on the competence to investigate these facts, given that Anti-Corruption disagrees with that criterion and believes that it cannot claim all of the investigations.
Concepción Sabadell, former Anti-Corruption Prosecutor in the Gürtel case and now the Spanish representative in the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, last week asked his former boss, Alejandro Luzón, for the investigation opened into the contract for the sale of masks to the Community of Madrid for which the brother of the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, had received 55,000 euros.
In the opinion of the European body, a crime of embezzlement of European funds could have been committed, something with which the department headed by Alejandro Luzón would not agree, who has raised a conflict of powers before the State Attorney General, Dolores Delgado, who It could be resolved at the meeting of the Board of Prosecutors, the leadership of the race, this Monday.
In this context, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office has lamented the controversy that has arisen and has recalled in a statement that its regulation establishes a preferential jurisdiction for the European Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate all the facts related to a possible fraud that affects the financial interests of the European Union.
And, “given our unprecedented nature and the complex interaction between national and European laws under which we operate”, he recalled that in a situation of conflict of competences, the possibility of resorting to the Court of Justice of the European Union should always be considered and asked the state attorney general to consider this option.
On February 22, the chief anti-corruption prosecutor Alejandro Luzón opened an investigation to determine whether there were signs of a crime in the 1.5 million euro contract for the purchase of masks at the start of the pandemic in China that the Community of Madrid awarded to a company related to a brother of Díaz Ayuso and for which he would have charged 55,000 euros.
Luzon does not appreciate that a crime of embezzlement of community funds could have been committed since public money was “undoubtedly” used to buy masks in the midst of the pandemic.
The Anticorruption proceedings were opened as a result of the complaint presented by the three left-wing parliamentary groups in the Madrid Assembly (Más Madrid, PSOE and Unidas Podemos) for that contract.
In its opening decree, Luzón refused to refer these investigations to the Supreme Court, when Díaz Ayuso was appraised, not appreciating that the facts denounced do not constitute “reasonably plausible indications of the commission of the act under investigation, of its criminal nature and of the responsibility in the same as the person with capacity”.
(c) EFE Agency