Zapatero's lawyer requested full access to material before protesting over leaks
Lawyer Moreno Catena first claimed complete access to the Plus Ultra case proceedings and then demanded to restrict their dissemination. Judge Calama has adopted measures to stop further leaks.
Zapatero's defence claimed complete access to the file before denouncing leaks
The lawyer for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Víctor Moreno Catena, protested to the judge about the dissemination of private information concerning the former president after having himself requested, weeks earlier, complete access to all material contained in the proceedings. This is reported by El Mundo on the basis of documents submitted to the investigating judge José Luis Calama.
In a document dated 2 June, Moreno Catena addressed Judge Calama to note that the police reports, the Public Prosecutor's statements and the judge's rulings contained "multiple references to conversations appearing on at least two devices, which precisely are not available to the parties".
The lawyer argued that "in the interest of defending the fundamental rights" of his client, there were "digital evidence that does not appear in the case uploaded to the Cloud Platform". In that document he warned: "It is not possible to selectively pick or present a communication in fragments and hide its entirety; in that way procedural propriety, equality of the parties and good faith are undermined."
The request was clear: either the devices were provided in their entirety so that the defence teams could access them completely, or they should be completely excluded, removing the references to contents that the parties had been able to examine. That text contained no request for expurgation of Zapatero's personal material.
Change of position following publication of the diaries
Once that complete access was granted—exactly as Moreno Catena had requested—last week information about the investigation was published, prompting the same lawyer to submit a second document, this time in the opposite sense. In forceful language, the lawyer demanded restrictions on access to information and protested over the dissemination of the former president's diaries and the complete chat with his secretary, noting that this violated "gravely and irreparably the fundamental rights" of Zapatero "without prior precautions or subsequent measures having been adopted to prevent such a violation".
The lawyer noted that the inclusion of the proceedings on the Justice Cloud platform—to which only the parties can access—had resulted in the content of the report and its annexes being "immediately reflected in the media".
The judge adopts measures and opens investigation into leaks
Judge Calama agreed that same day to various measures to prevent further dissemination. In his ruling he recalled that the proceedings involve 15 accused parties and 10 popular prosecutions, with 23 lawyers with access to the Cloud system. From now on, there will be no audio of statements, only transcripts, and only the PP—which has been assigned to coordinate the prosecutions—will have access to the platform. Calama has also referred what happened to the Madrid courts so that they open an investigation into the leaks.
Zapatero's defence considers these measures insufficient and demands that the judge order investigators from the Unit for Economic and Fiscal Crime (Udef) to restrict themselves to appending to their reports "the documentation strictly necessary to support their police conclusions", refraining from attaching the complete content of personal documents unrelated to the proceedings.
Moreno Catena also requests that material seized in the May searches, "which has not yet been subject to expurgation", be transferred to a separate section to which only the Public Prosecutor and Zapatero's defence can access, so as to filter from there which information becomes available to the rest of the parties.
The Plus Ultra case, being investigated in the National Court, concerns the granting of a 34-million-euro rescue to the airline during the pandemic. The defence teams of other investigated parties have also appeared before the court to request that personal information about their clients that was not strictly necessary for the proceedings be restricted.
Source: El Mundo