The Public Prosecutor's Office will appeal the order issued on April 10 by Judge Salvador Alba, which annuls the first recording of the Unión case. This has been confirmed to La Voz by the Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Las Palmas, which is already working on that appeal against the order of the magistrate of the Sixth Section of the Provincial Court. And it is that although the Prosecutor's Office had already stated that this recording is "perfectly dispensable" in the procedure, given the "overwhelming evidentiary picture" that exists in the case against Luis Lleó, it will continue to defend its validity.
This was stated by prosecutor Javier Ródenas at the hearing of preliminary issues held on February 2 and resolved with this order, and this was also reflected in his written response to the allegations made by Lleó, who presented more than 500 pages invoking alleged grounds for annulment in the procedure. "To qualify and embellish in a multitude of passages of the writing presented as a false and quasi-criminal activity the attitude of the investigating judge and officials of the UCO is a discourse so desperate that it can only be explained from the sensation that its author must suffer to articulate a minimally reasonable line of defense," responded prosecutor Javier Ródenas in his writing.
Regarding the recording that has been annulled, it corresponds to a conversation between the complainant, Carlos Espino, and the confessed intermediary of the attempted bribery, Fernando Becerra, and it was made before judicial proceedings were opened and under the supervision of the UCO. "Mr. Espino does not have to receive a judicial resolution that enables him to record the conversation he has with another person, he is entitled to record said conversation and does not break the privacy of the recorded because what is said in said conversation captured by Mr. Espino does not affect the intimate core of Mr. Becerra," the Prosecutor's Office stated when responding to the preliminary issues raised by Lleó.
The allegedly violated privacy was not Lleó's, but Becerra's
"Therefore, judicial authorization was not required for the recording of something that does not affect the privacy of the recorded," insisted the Public Prosecutor's Office, adding that "examining with an impartial eye the transcription of the conversation" provided to the case, "there is no trace of intimate content that could have been violated." However, Judge Alba argues in his order that when Becerra went to that meeting at Espino's office to offer him a bribe, Becerra had a "reasonable expectation of privacy" that was "frustrated." "It is evident that both the conversation and the recording of it were provoked, and this disqualifies it as evidence in this process," he alleges.
For his part, the prosecutor had also emphasized that the one who alleged the alleged violation of privacy was not Becerra himself, who has confessed and accepted the penalty requested for him by the Prosecutor's Office, but Luis Lleó, who did not intervene in that conversation. However, Judge Alba has accepted this claim by Lleó, also pointing out that his "privacy" was also affected by being named in that conversation without participating in it. "It is not something intimate, it is a bribe as big as a piano," prosecutor Ródenas had stated at the hearing of preliminary issues.
In addition, he also refuted another of the defense's arguments, which equated the content of that conversation to that of a confession, alleging that the right not to testify against oneself would thus be violated. "It is not a confession, it is the recording of a crime that is being committed at that moment," warned the prosecutor, providing an argument that has not been considered in Judge Alba's order.
In its written allegations, the Prosecutor's Office already cited different jurisprudence that establishes the difference "between the recording of conversations of others and the recording of conversations with others", and also between conversations that prove a fact "that is going to be committed or that is being committed" and those that imply "the confession of the authorship of a fact already perpetrated some time ago". And in this case, he considered it clear that what the recording collects is "the illicit act that is being committed during the course of the conversation captured by one of its interlocutors." However, in his order, Judge Alba refers to the recording as a "confession."
Alba praises the private expert reports provided by Lleó
Regarding the rest of the chain annulments that Lleó claimed, alleging that they would start from a null act, the magistrate does not rule for the moment and orders a new expert test to be carried out. Specifically, in the order he asks to compare the content of the CDs and DVDs of the rest of the recordings, corresponding to the telephone interceptions, with the central Sitel server where they are recorded.
This was proposed by the Public Prosecutor's Office in case the new private expert reports provided by Lleó's defense were admitted, which speak of an alleged "manipulation" in the content of those recordings. However, the case file contains two official expert reports that confirm that there was no manipulation in those conversations, which have already been endorsed by both the Provincial Court and the Supreme Court in other parts of the Unión case. And they have also been endorsed in Lleó's piece, where the Second Section of the Provincial Court rejected one of the defendant's appeals requesting a third expert test. "The acoustic expert reports say what they say, whether Mr. Lleó likes it or not," that order stated.
However, Judge Alba praises in his order the expert reports paid for and provided by Luis Lleó, calling them "detailed and very technical", and orders to compare the content of the CDs and DVDs with the Sitel central. In this regard, it should be remembered that in one of the Supreme Court's final judgments on another piece of the Unión case, it was made clear that there is no material possibility of manipulating the recordings made with Sitel and that the agents can only listen to the content, "but never modify it." Afterwards, those recordings are transferred to a support, CD or DVD, "which is read-only", so "it cannot be recorded on it." Thus, although the realization of this test is not going to affect the procedure, what it will entail is a delay in the holding of the oral trial, which will take place before a popular jury once the preliminary issues have been resolved, now including the request for this new test.
