The former president of the Cabildo and CC councilor, Pedro San Ginés, has opted for silence throughout the investigation of the new case that will take him to trial, for crimes of perjury and/or false accusation. No explanations, no pleadings in his defense. When he was summoned by the judge to clarify whether he acted "knowingly" and "maliciously" when making "false accusations" against the former councilor of the Tourist Centers and several suppliers of the entity, San Ginés refused to testify.
"The investigated party, invoking his constitutional right not to testify, has not provided any exculpatory information," states Magistrate Jerónimo Alonso, in the order in which he ends the investigation and concludes that there are "rational indications of criminality" to bring San Ginés to trial.
Furthermore, the judge adds that his defense also "has not proposed any measures aimed at disproving the elements that pointed towards his participation in the investigated crimes." These crimes were reported by the daughter of the businessman Antonio González, now deceased, who was one of the people who were harmed by the complaints filed by the former president, first before the UCO and then in the Duty Court.
In his order, the magistrate emphasizes the "scope" of that "illegal action" by San Ginés, who "knowing the lack of veracity of his accusations and with full knowledge of it, tried to artificially involve third parties" in serious crimes.
In the case of the businessman Antonio González, the judge recalls that this had consequences "both from a personal point of view, being subjected to a long investigation" that lasted ten years, "as well as patrimonial," as his company was affected and even faced the imposition of a bond of 1.3 million euros.
"The initial 'possibility' that the investigated party could have committed the illicit acts object of the present case has not been disproven throughout the investigation and reaches the necessary 'probability' that justifies the opening of an indictment trial," concludes the magistrate, after analyzing all the measures taken in the investigation and the absence of pleadings from San Ginés in his defense.
He alleged prescription giving an unreal date
The magistrate only refers to one allegation that he raised, which involved trying to argue that the investigated crimes had already prescribed. This argument is the one that Pedro San Ginés' defense has been using since the investigation began, and it was already rejected by the Provincial Court, which dismissed his appeal and ordered the investigation to continue.
Now, the magistrate reiterates that such prescription does not exist, and also for multiple reasons. On the one hand, because a crime of false accusation cannot be investigated until that accusation has been resolved. That is, until there is an acquittal or an order archiving the procedure to which it gave rise, upon concluding that such crimes did not exist. And in this case, the dismissal order of the Tourist Centers case was issued at the end of 2019, and it was only a few months later when Antonio González's daughter filed the lawsuit.
The magistrate adds that even ignoring this, the crimes would not have prescribed either, since we would be facing a "criminal unit" that lasted for 10 years. And it is that in addition to filing the complaint in 2009, San Ginés later testified twice as a witness in the criminal proceedings that he managed to have opened.
However, when alleging that alleged prescription of the crime of perjury, San Ginés' defense omitted one of those statements. Specifically, he argued that the last time he appeared as a witness in the Centros case was in July 2011, when the reality is that he did so again eight years later. "The argumentation of this defense is not sustainable. In the first place, even assuming that the calculation of the prescription period should be placed at the time of the last judicial statement of the defendant Pedro San Ginés Gutiérrez -which this instructor does not share-, the truth is that said event did not occur on July 13, 2011, but on October 21, 2019," the magistrate responds.
Furthermore, he again emphasizes the "excessive prolongation" that the investigation of that case had, which for years was in charge of the sanctioned judge Rafael Lis, "meaning that during all that time the alleged illicit situation that is now being investigated has been latent."
