The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has asked the judge of the Mediator case to investigate if "the closest circle" of General Francisco Espinosa Navas, one of the main defendants, has accounts outside of Spain to which money from bribes or commissions may have been diverted.
The prosecutor makes this request in a letter in which he expresses his support for a request made along the same lines by the Internal Affairs Service of the Civil Guard, the unit that has carried out the bulk of the investigations related to General Espinosa and his relations with the rest of those prosecuted in Mediator.
The judge of Instruction number four of Santa Cruz de Tenerife had already requested help from the Belgian authorities some time ago to verify if there was any account in that country in the name of General Espinosa, who when he was arrested kept 61,110 euros in banknotes at home, between the clothes in a closet and in a shoe box.
And all this, because another of the main defendants, Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, the intermediary who gives the case its name, had stated that Francisco Espinosa had provided him with an account that, due to its numbering, seemed to be from Belgium, so that he could make deposits in the future within the businesses that both maintained with several businessmen who had resorted to his alleged capacity to influence politicians and public officials.
The prosecutor recalls that the reality of the existence of that account was corroborated, to emphasize that the Civil Guard's suspicions that there may be more financial products outside of Spain in the name of Espinosa's environment come "from the same source": Navarro.
The Public Prosecutor's Office considers the police request, made in November, to be "fully in accordance with the law and with the indications and circumstances of the investigated facts."
The prosecutor considers it convenient to continue investigating the transcribed conversations and allegedly illicit behaviors that have given rise to this investigation, as requested by the Civil Guard.
That is why he asks the judge for a second European investigation order, "not only in relation to the investigated Espinosa Navas, but also those who, being part of his closest environment, could be in charge or with the capacity to dispose of the indicated banking products" in the Civil Guard's request.
Because, he adds, "the indications pointed out by the investigated Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte reveal that the other investigated mentioned here had the financial products abroad with the purpose of allocating the allegedly illicit income under investigation."
