The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office supports the admissibility of the challenge raised by the popular accusation in the trial of former Valencian president Francisco Camps in one of the pieces of the Gürtel case to remove the magistrate of the National Court Joaquín Delgado, former high-ranking official in the governments of Mariano Rajoy and Jose Maria Aznar.
According to a document to which La Vanguardia has had access, the prosecutors have reported in favor of the challenge raised by the popular accusation for his past as General Director of Relations with the Justice Administration at the time of Rafael Catalá as Minister, and ceased after the motion of censure against Rajoy in June 2018 that promoted Pedro Sánchez to the presidency. In addition, he held the position of advisor to the Minister of Justice José María Michavila in 2002 and 2003, during the Aznar government.
The letter reflects the "affinity" of the magistrate with the Popular Party because he has been appointed to senior government positions of this formation at the proposal of ministers of the aforementioned party. He underlines that in this piece "many senior officials of the Administration of the Generalitat Valenciana and the Popular Party are prosecuted in the years 2004 to 2009".
Among them would be Francisco Camps, president of the Valencian Generalitat in the period 2003-2011, who also held various positions in the national PP and especially in the Valencian one, in which he was elected president in 2004 until he resigned in 2011.
For Anticorruption, the "decisive intervention of the PP in his appointment to senior government positions" could be challenged, which "would be an indicator of a possible loss of objective appearance of Delgado's impartiality." For this reason, he considers that the challenge must be admitted for processing and that the Criminal Chamber of the National Court study whether he should be replaced by another judge in the trial that is scheduled to start in January and for which Camps faces two and a half years. in jail for the award to the Gürtel Orange Market company of the Valencian exhibitor at the Fitur fair in 2009.
The public ministry recalls that, according to the law, one of the grounds for disqualification is "intimate friendship or manifest enmity with any of the parties" and "having a direct or indirect interest in the lawsuit or cause."
The prosecutor recalls that the alleged reasons for removing Delgado from the Chamber that will prosecute Camps for a corruption case linked to the PP are the same ones that the National Court already used to remove Judge Concepción Espejel in Gürtel -now a magistrate of the Court Constitutional- because his appointment as a member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) was proposed by the PP and another magistrate, Pablo González.
“From the foregoing, it follows that the alleged indirect interest in terms of loss of objective appearance of impartiality derived from the decisive participation of the PP in the appointment of Delgado to senior government positions coincides with that admitted by the National High Court with respect to Espejel and González therefore, there is no basis whatsoever to modify the criteria maintained by that Chamber”, the document states.
In addition, the Prosecutor's Office claims the need to "extremely safeguard appearance in its external aspect", especially when a judge returns to the race after his time in politics. Remember that Europe already establishes that judges who re-enter the race "must refrain and, where appropriate, may be challenged, from intervening in any matters in which political parties or groups are a party, or those of their members who hold or have held office public".
