Court number 4 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has decided to open proceedings to investigate whether the "multiple and continuous publications" relating to the Mediator case constitute a crime of revealing secrets. At the request of the defense of the former PSOE deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo
In the Mediator case, Magistrate María de los Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceres is trying to determine if a group allegedly led by two public officials (Fuentes Curbelo himself and his nephew Taishet Fuentes, former Director General of Livestock of the Canary Islands) and a general of the Civil Guard (Francisco Espinosa) collected bribes from businessmen to obtain public contracts and subsidies or to prevent inspections or sanctions.
The case was developed under summary secrecy until February 14, the day on which eleven of the twelve investigated were arrested (at that time, Fuentes Curbelo was still a deputy in Congress and the judge refrained from taking any action against him, beyond recording in the proceedings the indications that pointed to him).
On February 13, Lorenzo-Cáceres issued an order by which she ordered that, once the arrests had been made, the summary secrecy be lifted and the proceedings be delivered to all parties, since until that moment only the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Police and Civil Guard teams in charge of the case knew about them.
However, the defense of Fuentes Curbelo, exercised by the lawyer Raúl Miranda, has complained to the judge about "the multiple and continuous publications" relating to the "Mediator case", which he believes could constitute a crime.
In a one-page order, the judge orders that it be investigated whether a crime of revealing secrets by a private individual (article 199 of the Penal Code) may have been committed and asks the Prosecutor's Office to inform her whether or not she appreciates a crime in them.
The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has specified that the proceedings to clarify whether or not this crime exists have been declared secret.
