The PP maneuvers to turn the investigation into tax fraud that affects the partner of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, into a plot designed by the central government against the party and its regional leader. After Alberto González, Ayuso’s boyfriend, recognized two tax crimes valued at 350,951 euros, the spokespersons for the party launched this Monday to denounce a “sexist” campaign that supposedly exploits State resources with interested leaks to harm the regional president. through his partner, unrelated to politics. Thus, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, assured that the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, is behind a plan hatched against Ayuso to cover up the Koldo case, which affects the PSOE; and the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, asked for the resignation of the State Attorney General. A strategy with precedents: Mariano Rajoy saw “a plot against the PP” in the outbreak of the Gürtel case, for whose instruction the party filed a complaint against Judge Baltasar Garzón. The same thing happened when the PP of Madrid (then chaired by Esperanza Aguirre) denounced the attorney general for the Majadahonda case (both complaints were filed).
On Wednesday the 13th, one day after the scandal broke out, the first to walk that already trodden path again was Ayuso. Conservative politics then places the target on the provincial chief prosecutor of Madrid, Pilar Rodríguez (“a lady who was general director in the Ministry of Justice under Zapatero,” she writes on her social networks). She points out that with the controversy over her partner, an attempt is made to cover up the plot of illegal commissions to obtain contracts to supply masks to the Administration in the worst of the pandemic that is being investigated in the Koldo case. And regarding the investigation of the commission agent with whom he lives, he points out: “Here there is not a political case, there is a murky case of all the powers of the State against an anonymous citizen.”
Almost a week after that intervention, Díaz Ayuso opted on Monday to persevere with the conspiracy thesis. By then, the Treasury had detailed that it considers that the president’s partner had “conscious, deliberate and clearly malicious conduct that merits criminal prosecution.” The businessman himself has acknowledged the crimes through his lawyer and has asked to reach an agreement. And both the central government and the Prosecutor’s Office have assured that the investigation followed the usual channels. However, the PP as a bloc comes out in defense of the thesis of the president of Madrid, endorses it and multiplies it.
“What is happening is that all the tools and powers of the State are being used against an individual to try to harm a politician, an adversary, something that seems Chavista to me, and very serious,” says Díaz Ayuso before the dedicated public. who accompanies her during a visit to a factory in Arganda del Rey (Madrid), and who bursts into applause and laughs when she downplays a journalist’s request about the case (“I prick myself and I don’t bleed with the question”).
“There has been a very serious scandal of leaks,” he complains about the data and file of his partner being known, who is studying complaints against the Treasury, the Prosecutor’s Office and Minister María Jesús Montero. And she concludes: “I understand that we have to try to destroy me by land, sea and air, like the left and its media outlets do, to try to discredit me. But at this point it is very surprising that with the corruption plot that the Government is suffering at the hands of the person who was its secretary of organization [en referencia a José Luis Ábalos y el caso Koldo]involving ministers, autonomous communities, organizations of all kinds, with detainees, guns, brothels… [se hable del caso de su pareja]”.
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That connection with Koldo case It reaches the category of official argument of the PP through its president. With the party wanting to focus on the demanding cycle of Basque (April), Catalan (May) and European (June) elections, and on the denunciation of the amnesty law as a cornerstone of its opposition work, Feijóo argues that Sánchez “ is at the center of this media plot against Mrs. Ayuso” with the aim of covering up the scandal that affects the PSOE.
“Who leaked? The prosecution? The Tax Agency? Who from the Prosecutor’s Office? “Who from the Tax Agency?”, He throws one question after another in an interview with Okdiario. “He Ayuso case can be converted into Montero case because it counted at five in the afternoon, giving fiscal and tax information, which was not published in the media until nine at night,” he argues to place the Minister of Finance as the origin of the leak. “[Sánchez] wants to tie, a smokescreen,” he insists on the Koldo case, directly blaming the President of the Government for the outbreak of the case that affects the partner of the president of the Community of Madrid. “It is clear to me that Mr. Sánchez knew it, he consented to it and accepted that this affair was set up against Mrs. Ayuso, I have no doubt,” he says. “He is consenting,” he emphasizes. “And proof of this is that he asks me to make her resign. Therefore, he must be at the center of this media plot against Mrs. Ayuso.”
But Feijóo stops short of asking for resignations over these alleged leaks. That is a role that is reserved for the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, in charge of executing a strategy that links the PP of today with the PP of yesterday, that of Feijóo with that of Rajoy and Esperanza Aguirre, through call into question the independence of judges and prosecutors.
“We cannot admit in a democracy that the attorney general of the State carries out a political operation that involves violating professional secrecy,” says Almeida, who attributes to Álvaro García Ortiz the order that motivated the statement from the Prosecutor’s Office clarifying that it had been the couple of Díaz Ayuso who had asked to reach an agreement (and recognized the crimes), and not the other way around, as the Community of Madrid had leaked. The statement also detailed that this offer occurred on February 2, more than a month before the case became known. That this information was made public was considered “extremely serious” by the Madrid Bar Association.
Taken together, all those PP complaints against prosecutors, investigators and political rivals sounded like familiar music.
For example, after the explosion Gürtel caseIn February 2009, Mariano Rajoy appeared at a press conference to denounce the existence of “a plot against the PP”, which included judges, prosecutors and police. “Never, not even with [Adolfo] Suarez, [José María] Aznar the [Felipe] González, such partisan use was made of the Prosecutor’s Office,” said the then president of the Popular Party: “PP militants are detained with hooded police officers to whom irreparable damage is done, and then they are released. The different standard is evident. 100% of the cases affect the PP. No to the PSOE. This does not fit with the rule of law.” He Gürtel case, which still has several branches pending to be judged, currently has close to 80 people sentenced to prison (including dozens of officials, advisors and relatives of the conservative party). Some of the people who accompanied Rajoy in that appearance ended up involved in the plot.
For its part, when Esperanza Aguirre presided over the Madrid PP, the party denounced the State Attorney General for communicating that it was opening an investigation into the Majadahonda case, what according to Aguirre herself was the origin of the Gürtel case. At the same time, the PP filed a complaint against Judge Garzón for the instruction of the Gürtel case. Everything ended up being archived.
Finally, Francisco Camps, former Valencian president (PP), also maintains an intense war against the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which put him on the bench in 2023 for his alleged involvement in Gürtel – a trial that is pending sentencing. Camps and his lawyer, who speak of the “PSOE Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office”, have accused the ministry of subjecting him to “merciless persecution” to try to “destroy” him, the result of a “psychopathological” obsession that “overflows” legality.
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