She had been trying for months to enter as a "popular accusation" in all parts of the Unión case and, after managing to appear in one of them, her first action has been to recuse the investigating judge, Silvia Muñoz. That has been the landing of the Association of Jurists for the Defense of Legality and Guarantees of the Jiménez de Asúa Process, which now intends to remove the judge from the procedure.
"There are times when the popular accuser is a Trojan horse that enters the process with a belly full of illegitimate interests," the Prosecutor's Office had warned, which last November opposed the acceptance of the appearance of this association, formed by a group of lawyers from Gran Canaria, in another part of the case.
In the recusal document against Silvia Muñoz, the association reproaches the judge for denying them the right to appear in the case in her day and for questioning "the very existence of the association, accusing it of a lack of rigor and seriousness in the request" and "indicating that they had neither accredited the existence of the association, nor the identity of its members, nor the purposes of its appearance, nor the legitimate interest, nor the condemnatory claim." Therefore, they consider that there is a "lack of objective impartiality and manifest animosity of the magistrate, which demonstrate the absolute hostility and loss of objectivity towards this association, its members and the lawyers of the same."
The recusal, signed by a lawyer who represented Lleó
That recusal document against the judge is signed by the lawyer Juan David García Pazos, who has at least one link with one of the main defendants in the Unión case, Luis Lleó. Specifically, García Pazos represented Lleó at least in a hearing held within this case before the Provincial Court. In addition, this lawyer defended the journalist Francisco Chavanel, in the lawsuit filed against him for his repeated attacks on the judges and prosecutors who have intervened in this procedure.
García Pazos is also the lawyer who took an environmental association from Fuerteventura, Agonane, to appear in the Stratvs case. Later, the association itself decided to withdraw from the procedure and stated that it felt "deceived and used" by this lawyer, since it believes that all he did was "contribute noise" and hinder the case.
Around the same time, the name of this lawyer began to appear in another of the main corruption cases opened in Lanzarote, this time as a member of the Jiménez de Asúa Association of Jurists. The association supposedly intends to act as a popular accusation in Unión, although so far its most prominent steps have been to file a complaint against the first investigating judge, César Romero Pamparacuatro, and now this recusal against the current magistrate, Silvia Muñoz.
They managed to enter a case after "correcting the deficiencies"
When this association of jurists began to try to appear in different parts of Unión, it was not even officially registered. It was months later, last November, when it was finally registered in the Register of Associations of the Canary Islands. Until then, among other things, it had not even accredited who its members were, as pointed out by both the Prosecutor's Office and the judge, who made different requests for them to correct those "serious defects" in their attempts to appear.
Finally, the magistrate ended up rejecting their appearance in all the cases. However, in one of them, which is the only one that was still open at that time, she finally had to admit it on March 21, after the Provincial Court accepted an appeal from the association. In that order, after showing "all the respect" to the "always sensible, worked and well-argued opinion of the investigating magistrate", the Court pointed out that the association had "corrected" the "deficiencies in documentary accreditation initially detected", so it agreed that its appearance should be admitted in that case, which was the only one that was not closed at that time.
However, coinciding with the official entry of this association of jurists as a popular accusation, the order of abbreviated procedure was issued, which also put an end to the investigation of that case, which has María Isabel Déniz and Felipe Fernández Camero among the main defendants. Precisely because of the issuance of that order, which put an end to the investigation of a case with 110 volumes and more than 60,000 pages, the association considers that the judge had an "evidently hostile" attitude towards them.
They intended to request proceedings after seven years of investigation
"We understand that it was to prevent us from requesting investigation proceedings and participating in the investigation," he states in his recusal document. It so happens that while in this case they consider it an offense that the investigation has been closed coinciding with their appearance, in the rest of the cases they tried to enter when they were already closed. And also in the Stratvs case, to which García Pazos took that environmental association from Fuerteventura. "The key is in the oral trial, not in the investigation," this lawyer said then, when La Voz asked him why this late appearance, when the case had been under investigation for years and at that time it was already closed.
However, the same lawyer now reproaches the judge for closing the investigation of that last open case of Unión, according to him, "surprisingly" and "preventing" them from "exercising the popular accusation as a procedural party." It should be remembered that their first request to appear occurred last July, when the case has been under investigation since 2009. And now, the association maintains that it intended to propose new "investigation proceedings." And he raised the same thing in other cases in which he tried to enter when they were already closed, and in which he even asked that the orders that had put an end to the investigation be annulled.
Regarding the case in which they have managed to appear, the association considers that the judge incurred in a "contradiction" by declaring the case "complex" some time before, in order to extend the investigation period to 18 months, when she finally closed it at the end of last March.
In addition to the Unión case, this same association is trying to appear or has already appeared in other corruption cases opened in the Arrecife Courts. Among them, a separate piece of the Yate case against the lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero, for embezzlement of public funds. In the case of that case, it is also already closed and even with the Prosecutor's Office's indictment presented. And it has also just appeared in the case against Camero's son-in-law, Ignacio Calatayud, in the separate piece of the procedure for the seizure of the Montaña Roja desalination plant.
Change of name of the association
Among the "defects" pointed out by the judge and the Prosecutor's Office in the attempts to appear, there is even a partial change of name of the association, which began by presenting itself as the Association of Jurists for the Defense of Legality and Justice Jiménez de Asúa, and then changed to the Association of Jurists for the Defense of Legality and Guarantees of the Jiménez de Asúa Process.
Regarding the documents that the magistrate requested from them in her day, this group of lawyers maintains that "an association does not have to be constituted by means of a public deed" and that neither "is it required to act as a popular accusation a legitimate interest", which was one of the issues that the magistrate asked them to clarify.
As for the reasons they give in their recusal, the association itself recognizes that at least one of them "does not strictly concur", but defends that "nothing prevents its analogous application in light of international legislation" and defends that a "non-restrictive interpretation of the grounds for recusal" be made. While waiting for their request to be resolved, for the moment the magistrate has to withdraw from the procedure, since that is the procedure that a recusal entails. This does not affect the investigation of this case, which is already closed, but it does affect the appeals of the defendants that are pending resolution in the Court.
