“I don’t know if I said that,” “I didn’t say anything about favors,” “I didn’t affirm it,” “I don’t think I made any derogatory comments,” “I didn’t insinuate” and “everything was opinions.” These were some of the answers left by journalist Francisco Chavanel during the trial he faced last Friday, for the lawsuit filed against him by prosecutor Ignacio Stampa, for violating his right to honor.
“I don’t think he is a corrupt prosecutor, not at all. I haven’t said that and I don’t believe it either,” Chavanel stated during the trial, which lasted almost 10 hours and ended shortly before 9 p.m. However, both the plaintiff and the Public Prosecutor's Office consider that this is precisely what this journalist has been doing since 2014, even if he did not directly affirm it. “One thing is that a public official is subject to criticism, and another is that crimes are imputed to him,” the prosecutor argued when presenting her conclusions, who insisted that Chavanel has reported on “false” and “unverified” facts.
Therefore, the Public Prosecutor's Office requested that a conviction be issued and that the lawsuit filed against Chavanel, against the production company of his radio program, Escorpión de Jade, and against the newspaper Canarias 7, for the comments made on the radio and for the articles published in the regional newspaper, be upheld.
“If there are no insults, there is no violation of the right to honor”
For their part, both the journalist's lawyer and those of the two co-defendants insisted on denying that derogatory or insulting comments had been made against the prosecutor, or that crimes had been imputed to him. “I really think that Mr. Chavanel is Mickey Mouse,” said the lawyer for Canarias 7, comparing the radio programs that were heard during the trial with “others that are heard in Spain.” However, as the journalist himself acknowledged, his actions generated an “unprecedented” reaction from the Fiscal Council, which in July 2014 had to intervene by issuing a statement in which it gave protection to Ignacio Stampa and asked that “the attacks against his honor” cease.
“A public official has to endure even insinuations that he has committed crimes,” said the lawyer for Canarias 7. And to support this, he relied on a ruling that only partially upheld a lawsuit filed by the former president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Paulino Rivero, against a media outlet in Tenerife. In that case, according to the lawyer, the conviction was imposed only for the direct insults that were uttered against the plaintiff, such as “dwarf, son of a bitch, idiot, trash, fool and cur”. “If there are no insults, there is no violation of the right to honor,” concluded the lawyer for Canarias 7.
Both this lawyer and the rest of the defense insisted that in the programs and articles that are analyzed in this lawsuit, Chavanel only used the word “sheriff” to refer to Ignacio Stampa (although among others he also called this prosecutor and Judge César Romero Pamparacuatro “barnyard roosters”), and that this is not an “insult”. And regarding the rest of his statements, they argued that in the lawsuit there are no “quoted” phrases and that “a conviction cannot be sought based on an interpretation” of what Chavanel said and wrote.
To this, Stampa's lawyer responded that the problem is not what he said literally, but what he “came to say”, “which is what transcends to public opinion”. “The tone, modulation, irony, sarcasm, and reiteration are very important,” he added. And the prosecutor said the same, pointing out that all the statements that Chavanel made are “sufficient to generate in the recipient” the idea that there are “people who are committing crimes”. In fact, the prosecutor recalled that graffiti was seen in Arrecife calling the prosecutor “corrupt”, and also referred to the calls from listeners to Chavanel's program, telling him that “if it weren't for him we wouldn't know how bad, bad” the judges and prosecutors who have investigated the main corruption cases opened in Lanzarote are.
An “average” of “127 people” read his articles on the Internet
The lawsuit requests compensation of 350,000 euros, for which the journalist, his production company and Canarias 7 should be jointly liable. In this regard, the plaintiff's lawyer cited rulings that “for a single article” have imposed sentences of 30,000 euros, so he considers that in this case, with “dozens” of radio programs and articles published, the figure they are claiming is adjusted.
For their part, the defenses considered this amount excessive. In addition, both the director of Canarias 7 and the lawyer for this media outlet referred to the limited following that Chavanel's articles had. According to the lawyer, his columns had “an average of 127 visits” in the digital edition of the newspaper. “0.02 percent of the readers,” they both stressed. “Not a single day in which the articles were published did sales increase. It has not generated any benefit, on the contrary,” he added about the print edition.
As for the radio, Francisco Chavanel placed the responsibility for bringing up issues related to Stampa's relatives on another journalist who collaborates on the program, Valentín Auyanet. In one of the cases, Auyanet declared in the trial that his “source” was “a” lawyer who, in turn, supposedly, was told by two prisoners in Tahíche. In the other, the alleged information came from something that had been published six years earlier and that, according to him, he limited himself to “reproducing”. And in both cases, it was clear that he did not verify or confirm it with anyone else before broadcasting it on the radio.
“The falsehood of everything that is affirmed falls apart on all sides,” said Stampa's lawyer, pointing out that they even “questioned whether my client has paid the rent” for his house, when they have provided all the payment receipts, or tried to link him to a person saying that he had bought him a car, when the truth is that he acquired his vehicle from another company that had nothing to do with it. “He has not verified absolutely anything,” the lawyer insisted.
Opinion does not have “requirement of veracity”, according to the defense
The other axis of the defense focused on arguing that what Chavanel gave was not information, but “opinions”, and that therefore they did not have the “requirement of veracity”. That is, according to them, one can give opinions by uttering lies, under the protection of the right to freedom of expression. “They cannot say that it was opinion when at the same time they affirm that they were pioneers in uncovering this information,” responded Stampa's lawyer, referring to the statement that Chavanel himself and Valentín Auyanet had previously made. In any case, “whether it is information or opinion, he is imputing the commission of crimes to my client,” stressed the lawyer, who considers that the prosecutor was indirectly accused of “prevarication, influence peddling and even bribery”.
For her part, the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office stressed that the problem is not that this journalist gave his opinion on Stampa's work as a prosecutor, but that he disseminated alleged information about his private life or about his family, which was not even true, linking it to his intervention in judicial proceedings, as if for this reason certain people had not been charged or others had been, according to him, “persecuted”. “One thing is to be the object of criticism in relation to something you have done and another is to be so about what is not true,” the prosecutor insisted.
And he extended this to other statements that Chavanel has been making, such as that Stampa was “removed” from the Unión case due to alleged “irregularities” in his intervention. Even, in his program it was repeatedly stated that the chief prosecutor of the Environment of Las Palmas, Javier Ródenas, had given a press conference in Arrecife to explain it, when that press conference did not even exist. The only thing that happened was some statements made in 2009 by Ródenas, by telephone, and precisely to La Voz de Lanzarote, in which he explained that the Prosecutor's Office had decided to “reorganize”, given the dimension that the Unión case was reaching, given that Stampa should focus on other cases in the area of the Environment, such as the Yate case, which also had an outbreak that year with the arrest of the former mayor, José Francisco Reyes, and several members of his family.
However, although then most of the pieces of Unión were personally assumed by Javier Ródenas and by the anti-corruption prosecutor of Las Palmas, Luis del Río, Stampa returned to intervene when the second phase of Unión, Operation Jable, broke out, and continued to carry some pieces of that case, such as that of Proselan, in which he represented the Public Prosecutor's Office during the trial, and which even has a final judgment from the Supreme Court. And he also remained in charge of the Stratvs case and later assumed the Montecarlo case.
“Instead of reflecting, he roared against the Fiscal Council”
Far from being “removed” or questioned, as Chavanel has been repeating, the truth is that the Prosecutor's Office has given Ignacio Stampa greater responsibility, since last year he was assigned to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office of Madrid, where he is currently working. And this is in addition to the protection statement that the Fiscal Council issued in 2014, in which it supported his work and asked that the “attacks” against him cease. In that statement, the Council already warned of possible legal actions, since it considered that “without directly affirming specific criminal acts”, “defamatory insinuations” were being “formulated”.
“At that moment, a more reflective person would have analyzed whether what he was saying was true,” said the plaintiff's lawyer, stressing that “instead of reflecting on whether he had any reason”, Chavanel's reaction the day after that statement was issued was to “roar against the Fiscal Council” and “utter challenging exclamations”. In fact, beyond the radio programs that are analyzed in this lawsuit, there are other later ones in which the attacks were even intensified, not only on Stampa but on other prosecutors, investigating judges, magistrates of the Audiencia and even on the State Attorney General's Office.
However, in the case of Canarias 7, Chavanel's articles stopped being published, coinciding with the filing of this lawsuit. “The break shows that Canarias 7 is aware that it has done something wrong. That's why they stop,” stressed the plaintiff's lawyer. “It was for other reasons that have nothing to do with this,” responded the lawyer for this newspaper. And the same was stated by the director of the media outlet, Francisco Suárez Álamo, who also appeared at the hearing as a defendant. “I did not give him an order to stop publishing about the Unión case or about Lanzarote,” “he stopped publishing because the relationship he had ended. I don't remember it being because he stopped publishing about Unión,” he said.
His sources, “buddies or interested people”
“He has spoken with buddies, or with interested people who tell him what he wants, and Mr. Chavanel puts together with that the conspiratorial theory that brings us here today,” stressed Stampa's lawyer, referring to one of the messages most repeated by this journalist, who even spoke of a “barbecue covered in party” in an apartment in Famara where, according to him, the Unión case was conceived, linking even Rubalcaba and the then president of the Government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. According to Chavanel, they all joined cultural foundations, media outlets, judges, prosecutors and UCO agents to “achieve a purpose that is the demolition of the PIL”.
“Some lawyers or I don't know who tell him that there is a party and he puts together a conspiracy theory. And that being good, because maybe he is defending other interests of some person accused in Unión,” stressed the lawyer. In this regard, it should be recalled that Chavanel's name appears in the summary of the Unión case, among other things in a conversation between Dimas Martín and Francisco Rodríguez Batllori, in which they talk about holding a meeting with this journalist to start a campaign to clean up the image of the historical leader of the PIL after his release from prison (at that time Dimas was serving a sentence for the Complejo case).
In addition, while publicly attacking the instructors of the Unión and Stratvs cases, Chavanel also worked for the main defendant in that case, Juan Francisco Rosa, as a collaborator in his media outlets, of the Lancelot group. And according to the plaintiff's lawyer, the attacks against the prosecutor began after the Stratvs winery, owned by Rosa, was closed by court order. Until that moment, the journalist had already been attacking the first judge of Unión, César Romero Pamparacuatro, but from then on he also “targeted” Stampa.
The investigating judge of the Stratvs case, Silvia Muñoz, who is also the one who has finished the investigation of Unión, also testified as a witness in the trial and referred to Stampa's work highlighting his “rigorous, technical and very professional intervention” and stressing that he is “a prosecutor who takes matters very seriously”. In addition, she described as “false” some of the statements made by this journalist, including an alleged meeting with “two senior officials from Yaiza” that did not exist. And she also pointed out that she herself reserves the possibility of initiating actions against Francisco Chavanel, since from this lawsuit she has become aware of some of the attacks that he has launched against her. It should be recalled that in addition to this trial, the journalist has another pending with César Romero Pamparacuatro, who has also filed a lawsuit against him.
He never “contacted the Court to inquire about the case”
“Chavanel at no time contacted the Court to inquire about the case,” said the prosecutor, thus repeating what was expressed by the current instructor of Unión. In her statement, the magistrate explained that given the media interest generated by the Unión case, the Court “has always collaborated with the press office of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands”, which is the one that channels information to the media. And through it, “the journalists” from insular, regional and even national media outlets “who arrived interested in specific aspects” were attended to, since at that time “there was no protected data because it was the final phase of the investigation”.
However, despite defending that in his program they have been “pioneers” in the information of the Unión case -or in what he defined in the trial as “the plot of the Unión case”-, this journalist never tried to access official information of the case. “Mr. Chavanel has never asked for a verification of any news,” said the judge, stressing that Francisco Chavanel did not try to contact either directly with the Court, or through the official press office, to verify any of the information he disseminated and that, in reality, did not focus on the investigated, accused and convicted, but on the investigators.
According to the plaintiff's lawyer, Chavanel was based on “his sources, his buddies, dark and unknown people to all of us who are here. But they are not the sources from which one must drink when talking about judicial issues and judges and prosecutors”. On this issue, the lawyer asked the journalist during his statement: “I am not going to tell you here what my sources are,” he replied. “He is asking you how you verify the information,” intervened Judge Manuel Cerrada Moreno. “Talking with sources. With lawyers, people who are close... And with the documents themselves,” he added then, referring to what the defenses named the most during the trial: what they call “the Barrancos report”.
“We are not going to review the Unión case here”
During the long and tense hearing, the judge had to intervene repeatedly to reject questions and to repeat to the defenses what the object of that procedure was. “We are not going to make a general case”, “we are not going to review the Unión case here” or “I do not understand that (the plaintiff) has to explain why a person was or was not charged” were some of his phrases during the trial, in which on several occasions the defenses used expressions such as “the Unión case and the Stratvs case is what brings us here today”. “No, madam lawyer,” the judge interrupted him again, insisting again that what is being judged in this procedure is whether the honor of Ignacio Stampa has been violated.
And it is that although Chavanel denied having tried to discredit Stampa or having imputed crimes to him, during the trial he also tried to “repeat everything he said in his programs”, according to the plaintiff's lawyer. “What I say is that the praxis has been at least irregular on the part of Mr. Stampa,” declared the journalist, who again referred to the “Barrancos report”, affirming that for him “it is gospel”.
“The Barrancos report is not the object of the injuries to the right to honor,” the judge clarified again. That report was prepared by one of the judges who for a time led the investigation of the Unión case, Lucía Barrancos, and was addressed to the hierarchical body of the judges, to request a reinforcement judge, explaining the situation that had been found in the Court and in particular in this macro-corruption case. According to the latest ruling of the Unión case, known last Friday, “it is nothing more than a government report and not a jurisdictional resolution that declares any nullity”. In fact, despite the insistence of the accused, none of the judges and courts that have issued judgments so far in the Unión case have seen a single cause of nullity in the investigation. Nor that last conviction, for the Los Rostros piece, which was known precisely while this hearing was being held.
