The Justice system has once again rejected the claims of the Association of Jurists Jiménez de Asúa (AJJA), which has been taking action for years against those who report the main corruption cases open in Lanzarote. On this occasion, this controversial group of lawyers from Gran Canaria had requested that another association, Transparencia Urbanística, known for its role as a complainant and popular prosecutor in many of these cases, be dissolved.
"This judge cannot understand what legitimacy or legitimate interest the Jiménez de Asúa Association has to request the judicial declaration of dissolution of the defendant Association", states the judgment issued by the Court of First Instance Number 1 of Arrecife, which agrees with the defense of Transparencia Urbanística and concludes that AJJA was not even "legitimized" to file this lawsuit, so it rejects it in its entirety.
This ruling, dated May 16, is in addition to the one already issued by the same Court rejecting the precautionary measures that the association of jurists had requested within this lawsuit, in which it claimed that Transparencia Urbanística should be dissolved as a precautionary measure, alleging alleged irregularities in its operation that it could not prove. Now, what has been rejected is the lawsuit itself, concluding that it is "inadmissible" due to this lack of legitimacy. However, although it does not even go into the merits of the matter, the judgment also underlines how "confusing and incomprehensible" the arguments presented by Jiménez de Asúa are.
An association "useful to the interests" of several accused of corruption
The judgment, against which an appeal is still possible, emphasizes that associations are subject to judicial control, but "the normal thing is for it to be requested by the members themselves, when they understand that the activity of the governing bodies has exceeded its limits". However, as Transparencia Urbanística pointed out in its response to the lawsuit, in this case there was no complaint from the members but from another group that has been "useful to the interests of Luis Lleó, Juan Francisco Rosa, Felipe Fernández Camero" and others accused and charged in corruption cases. And for this, as the judge already warned when rejecting the precautionary measures, AJJA based itself on "entirely superfluous" considerations about the internal functioning of the association that "completely lack support".
In that hearing on precautionary measures, held last July, Jiménez de Asúa accused Transparencia Urbanística of failing to comply with up to 70 legal precepts, although it did not detail them in its lawsuit. In fact, it focused mainly on the fact that Transparencia Urbanística maintained an acting president for longer than its internal statutes allow. And the reason was that the then president, María Hernández Martí, was on sick leave. In its response, Transparencia Urbanística questioned that AJJA "commits the audacity and recklessness of questioning" that situation of temporary sick leave of its former president - due to a tumor in the nervous system - , going so far as to argue that the person who replaced her "usurped her functions".
Now, the lawsuit of the association of jurists has been rejected and has also been ordered to pay the costs again, as already happened when requesting the precautionary measures and as has happened to it in other proceedings, in which its claims have also been rejected and its legitimacy has been questioned.
Sentenced to a fine for "bad faith"
Although this association of jurists has supposedly tried to exercise popular prosecution in several corruption cases, its main steps when it has managed to enter have been aimed at trying to hinder these proceedings, as the Prosecutor's Office, the investigating judges and the Provincial Court have warned, which even imposed a fine of 1,000 euros on the association for "procedural bad faith", when trying to remove the investigating judge from the Unión case. In addition, Jiménez de Asúa also unsuccessfully filed a complaint against the first investigating judge of Unión, César Romero Pamparacuatro, and the Prosecutor's Office has referred to it as a "Trojan horse with illegitimate interests."
To date, although its appearance in several cases has been rejected, AJJA has managed to enter some, although the only Court where its theses have really been welcomed is the one led by Judge Rafael Lis, who has just been suspended for a very serious offense in the exercise of his office, for continuing to investigate a case in which there were doubts about his impartiality, due to his links with the businessman Juan Francisco Rosa, who had the magistrate's wife hired as a lawyer.
In that Court of Lis, AJJA is indeed involved in several cases and the judge even attended to several of its requests until the day before having to leave it to comply with a sanction from the General Council of the Judiciary.
