Spain’s Supreme Court on Monday summoned the country’s top prosecutor to testify about a suspected leak, one of several legal cases undermining Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s minority coalition government.
Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz (main image) must appear before the court on 29 January for allegedly leaking secret legal documents about the partner of the populist president of the Madrid regional government, Isabel Díaz Ayuso from the right-wing People’s Party (PP).
The Supreme Court began investigating Ortiz — a case unprecedented in Spanish legal history — in October last year, after the media published a draft agreement between the public prosecutor’s office and businessman Alberto González Amador, Ayuso’s partner. ALSO READ: Partner of Madrid regional leader Ayuso faces alleged tax fraud probe.
Investigators are probing allegations of tax fraud against Amador after one of his companies in the health sector saw its earnings soar during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. ALSO READ: Madrid leader’s partner takes legal steps to sue Pedro Sánchez for calling him a ‘criminal’.
Amador offered a deal to prosecutors in which he would admit the alleged offences in exchange for avoiding a trial, Spanish media reported, based on the leak.
The Supreme Court said in a ruling on Monday that preliminary findings in the investigation provided a ‘base of evidence’ to suspect Ortiz’s involvement in the revelations.
Ortiz was ‘the person who directed the steps that led to it (the leak), taking advantage of the position of superiority he held over other prosecutors’, the ruling added.
Ortiz, nominated by Sánchez’s government in 2022, has denied leaking information about Amador.
But Ayuso, a darling of the Spanish right who frequently lambasts Sánchez, has denounced a ‘savage’ campaign against her by the ‘powers of the state’.
The case has emboldened the PP opposition, which demanded Ortiz’s resignation and denounced an ‘unprecedented scandal in Spanish politics’.
Corruption investigations are also targeting Sánchez’s wife Begoña Gómez and his brother David Sánchez, providing the opposition with more ammunition to attack his fragile coalition government. ALSO READ: Begoña Gómez, wife of Spanish PM, denies wrongdoing in graft investigation hearing.
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