Friday, March 29

Anti-corruption concludes that the prosecutor in the Cursach case is not unable to defend himself due to his role in the case

After the president of the Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands (TSJIB) provisionally filed, in April last year, the accusation of Miguel Ángel Subirán – the prosecutor who for several years investigated the nightlife businessman Bartolomé Cursach for an alleged mafia network aimed at safeguarding their interests-, Anticorruption has just submitted a brief in which it concludes, contrary to what the prosecutor alleged, that he is qualified to defend himself against the accusations made against him for the role he played when he was in charge of the Cursach case.

In their brief, to which elDiario.es has had access, the Madrid prosecutors Fernando Bermejo and Tomás Herranz, in charge of the judicial procedure that investigates the alleged irregularities committed during the investigation against the Majorcan tycoon, assert that the alleged post-traumatic stress disorder that , according to Subirán, prevents him from facing his right to defense with guarantees in the framework of this case, it does not incapacitate him from remembering the events in which he would have intervened.

“The problems that the person under investigation could have with his memory in a judicial statement”, which three forensic experts scored a seven on a scale of one to ten, point out the prosecutors, “would only affect the traumatic events he suffered”. “But none of these traumatic events are imputed to him,” underlines the Public Ministry, which, regarding the investigations into how the Cursach case was investigated, specifies that “as an effect of a hypothetical post-traumatic stress disorder [Subirán] He will not suffer any problem, derived from his mental health, to remember those in which he could have intervened”.

Up to three forensic experts have appeared in the dependencies of the highest judicial instance of the Balearic Islands in relation to the alleged incapacity of the now former prosecutor -the Ministry of Justice declared his forced retirement due to incapacity in June 2020, at the age of 59-. In their statement, the experts ratified the reports they issued on the state of health of the former public prosecutor, in which they determined that Subirán is not in a position to exercise his defense due to the post-traumatic stress that they claimed he suffers from and that could affect to his memory and his capacity for attention to the cause.

However, the prosecutors maintain in their brief that “there is no obstacle to receiving a statement from the person under investigation” since “all the doctors who have examined him have been able to have a fluid interview with him (…) without problems of understanding and knowledge”. Likewise, they recall that the forensic examiners stated before the TSJIB that Subiran “was perfectly capable of knowing the meaning of the trial (referring to the criminal procedure) and, when questioned by the private accusations, one of them “exhaustively assured that ‘of course it does not affect him neither to intelligence nor to the ability to understand.

It should be remembered that in April of last year, the president of the TSJIB and instructor of these investigations, Carlos Gómez, released Subirán from the judicial procedure after the forensic experts determined that he is not in a position to defend himself, which is why the magistrate decided exonerate the accused “as long as he does not recover his mental health in terms that allow him to continue the process without diminishing his right to defense”.

Now, the judicial body must rule on the path to follow regarding Subirán and, in turn, decide who finally sits on the bench for the alleged illicit practices deployed at the head of the Cursach case. And it is that, at the time that Gómez provisionally filed the case for Subirán, the instructor left the judge who investigated Cursach, Manuel Penalva, also retired due to permanent disability and who had been on leave and separated from the Cursach case since March 2018 for lack of appearance of impartiality-, as well as four members of the National Police Money Laundering group -two inspectors, a sub-inspector and an agent- who collaborated hand in hand with a former judge and former prosecutor.

The magistrate thus took the step prior to opening a trial against them, convinced that Penalva and the four policemen leaked information about the Cursach case to the press when it was under judicial secrecy and did not act to prevent it -crimes for which he considers that they must answer before a court- However, both the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and some thirty private accusations -among them, those brought by the leisure businessman himself and the other defendants in the Cursach case- maintain that the former investigators in this case should be tried for, presumably, coercing witnesses to testify incriminating against the police and the tycoon, carry out illegal arrests and deliberately prolong the imprisonment of several under investigation.

So far, lawyers and police officers have categorically defended their work and deny the existence of “truly solid” evidence against them. They even accuse the Madrid prosecutors of holding “delusional theses” against him and basing their accusations on “untrue and interested” testimonies.

The trial of the Cursach case, pending signaling

In parallel, and while it is being decided why Penalva and the members of Blanqueo should finally go to trial and whether Subirán should be prosecuted again, the trial that plans to put Cursach himself and 23 others on the bench is pending. defendants -mostly local police officers from Palma-, under sentence petitions totaling more than a hundred years in prison, for concocting an alleged plot of extortion and favor treatment to keep the businesses of the considered king of the Majorcan night at the top , facts that made up the investigation carried out by Penalva and Subirán and currently questioned by the Prosecutor’s Office, private accusations and up to eight police reports.

In the specific case of the tycoon, Anticorruption, through an indictment signed by Subirán and his former partner Juan Carrau, claims eight and a half years in prison for alleged illicit belonging to a criminal group, administrative prevarication, coercion and active bribery. . The defendants, for their part, appeal for the nullity of the case based on what was investigated around those who put the spotlight on them.

There are many unusual circumstances that the Cursach case accumulates. Among them, an unprecedented one both in the Balearic Islands and at a national level: the six magistrates that make up the chamber that is to judge the case abstained en bloc -and without success- claiming to have taken part on numerous occasions in the “instructional gibberish” that the investigations of the alleged mafia network. They claimed to have resulted in a total of 158 appeals from this case. And they warned that their intervention endangered their impartiality when judging the procedure.

The request, filed in September 2020, was rejected by the then president of the Provincial Court, Diego Gómez Reino. The matter even reached the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), which rejected the appeal raised by two of the magistrates as it was an issue outside the powers of the highest body of judges.



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