"What was recorded is what happened". The Scientific Police pronounces itself with this forcefulness in an expert report carried out at the request of the Court that is investigating the "Unión" case, to clear any doubt about the veracity of the first DVD recordings of this case, in which Fernando Becerra offered a bribe to the complainant, Carlos Espino, on behalf of the businessman Luis Lleó, to unblock the construction on the Costa Roja plot.
"No manipulation or conscious or voluntary alteration has been observed to distort what was captured, what was collected being what was spoken". "There is no evidence of any alteration that makes us think that the auditory reality is different from the one actually produced." "No cuts or voice montages have been found fraudulently linked to simulate a voice sequence that did not really occur." Phrases like these are found in the conclusions of that report, carried out by an agent and by the chief inspector of the Scientific Police Unit of Madrid specialized in audiovisuals.
The presiding judge of the Court of First Instance Number 5 of Arrecife, Silvia Muñoz, requested this supplementary report after the defendants' defenses had alleged and disseminated that there was a supposed "manipulation" in the recordings. However, the report of the National Police flatly denies this and supports the work carried out by the UCO agents of the Civil Guard.
Seven seconds without image
In response to questions from the judge, the Scientific Police clarifies in the report that only in one of those DVDs there is a "cut in the image", but in no case in the audio. Specifically, the image appears "in black" for three seconds and then "color bars" and the "blue screen" appear, until it is recovered only 7 seconds later. However, although during those seconds you stop seeing "the people talking", "there is audio signal", and this "corresponds to what appears as a literal transcription in the proceedings of the conversation recorded on 3-12-2008 between Carlos Espino Angulo and Fernando Becerra Robayna in the offices of the Cabildo", the report states.
In the other DVD provided to the case of those conversations recorded by the UCO between the complainant, Carlos Espino, and the alleged intermediary of that bribe, Fernando Becerra, "no type of manipulation of cut or alteration is observed that distorts the reality of what was said and captured there." In fact, the person involved himself, Fernando Becerra, acknowledges the recordings (both those on these DVDs and those on the audio CDs that have also been questioned) and has shown his agreement with the penalty requested for him by the Prosecutor's Office, while it is Lleó who insists on requesting its annulment.
"The lack of images, whether for accidental or voluntary reasons, does not distort the reality of what was captured and there is a common thread in the normal development of the conversation, without prejudice to the cut, which in no way alters the normal rhythm of the conversation, which corresponds faithfully with the transcription that appears in the proceedings", emphasizes the expert report of the Scientific Police, which insists that "no fraudulent manipulations have been found that could mislead the listener."
To reach these conclusions, they point out that they analyzed the "synchronization of the images with the audio" in the "Civil Guard DVD", which is "the only one in which some type of alteration has been detected." Thus, they verified that "throughout the entire recording there is a correspondence between the audio and the video", based "on the synchronization of reference points such as greetings, the sounds of things and not of speech, entrances and exits, dead spaces, etc., no alteration being found that makes us think that the auditory reality is different from the one actually produced."
Nor have they found "alteration or cut" that "makes us think that the conversation recorded on the DVD is not what was said literally", so they conclude that "what was recorded is what occurred". "What was recorded is what happened, without the cut distorting the reality of the events", the report insists again.
The dates, irrelevant
Regarding another issue to which the defense has clung, referring to the fact that the date that appears next to the recordings is prior to the days on which they occurred, the expert report of the Scientific Police is once again forceful. "Regardless of when images are taken (in this case of meetings in which a date prior to their celebration appears) it is possible to set any date to images, either at the time of capture or at the time of creating the support on which they are based when they are copied or edited", explains the Scientific Police.
"When images are recorded, either in a camera or in a recording device, whatever its system, a date and time can be entered, since it is a manual act, since the recording device does not know by itself what date and what time it is at a given moment", he adds, also pointing out that "there is the possibility that the recorder always incorporates as the date the one that was configured at a certain moment, and from here all the recordings that are made appear with the same date."
In any case, he concludes that the fact that the recordings were made at different times - which is evident because "the same individuals who maintain the conversation are dressed in different clothes" -, and despite this they appear with the same date, "does not imply a fraudulent manipulation of the images, as no indication has been found to indicate this."