Fernando Presencia was a judge until 2017. His resume carries a host of sanctions, convictions, disqualifications and arrests of the most varied, for charging improperly, judicially benefiting his friends or insulting, among others. After being definitively removed from the judicial career, he decided to fight back and create a platform to attack magistrates and prosecutors. His technique is to file complaints accusing without any evidence of taking bribes and hiding the money in tax havens.
Finally, the judge of the National High Court Joaquín Gadea has stopped his feet and at the request of the Prosecutor's Office has summoned him as investigated and has closed the website where he posted videos making all kinds of accusations and published the complaints he filed and that they were not even admitted for processing.
One of the extremes that are now going to be investigated was whether Presencia, whose last destination before being expelled was Talavera de la Reina (Toledo), could have deceived his followers by requesting a "crowdfunding" to continue with his complaints, knowingly that the accusations made did not have any type of evidentiary or real basis.
According to the order for the opening of proceedings regarding Presence, he uses the Acodap association, falsely attributing his status as a judge, to request an economic contribution to support and make possible the fight against corruption, providing for this purpose the Iban of a current account as well as addresses of paypal and bizum, in which the corresponding deposits can be made. "For the time being, the amounts received for this concept or the destination given to them by the promoters of the campaign do not appear", explains Gadea.
Presencia has been making this type of publication for a long time and the truth is that it had achieved a market niche, people who gave credibility to their theories and shared and moved their videos through social networks.
Some digital media even gave him some credibility. For this reason, those affected have taken the step and some of them informed the Prosecutor's Office of the serious accusations launched by Presencia. Presence "hoaxes" have long been known in the judicial world. Until now, they had chosen to turn a "deaf ear", as sources from the high court explain. But his accusations are becoming more serious.
The Attorney General of the State, Dolores Delgado, her predecessor Julián Sánchez Melgar, the magistrates Pablo Llarena, Carmen Lamela or Vicente Magro are some of the Supreme Court magistrates who understood that silence in the face of such accusations was not the solution. On its website, Presencia went so far as to say that the president of the Supreme Court, Carlos Lesmes, was going to be arrested immediately.
Given this situation, the president of the Criminal Chamber of the high court, Manuel Marchena, sent a letter to Lesmes to take action on the matter and require the Prosecutor to report the facts. “The magistrates who make up this Chamber want to send V.E. not only the indignation that assails us due to the seriousness of some radically false, slanderous accusations, without any relation to the truth of our financial situation, but also due to the irreversible damage that is being caused to the credibility of an institution such as the Supreme Court", Marchena warned in the letter.
According to legal sources, what he intends with his complaints is to later have an argument to recuse all the Supreme Court magistrates who have to study an appeal against a new sentence that could lead to prison.
It is precisely because of who the injured parties are that the National High Court has finally declared itself competent to investigate a possible crime against the high institutions of the State, as well as insults and slander.
The judge investigating him has agreed to close his website under the threat of committing a crime of disobedience if he does not do so. "The exercise of freedom of expression cannot serve as an excuse for insult, nor can it undermine the dignity of the human being and his own value as a person," the judge explains in his order.
However, legal sources assume that this will not be so easy. Agents can't even locate his address. In addition, they are aware that Presence wants "revenge" and will go ahead with his plan. In fact, they do not rule out that he now takes the instructor of his cause as his next target.
