The National Court rejects Camps' attempt to remove Judge De Prada from his cause

The former president of the Generalitat Francisco Camps, upon his arrival at the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community on the second day of the trial for the 'suit case', in 2019.

The National Court has rejected the attempt by the

of the Generalitat Valenciana Francisco Camps to remove the magistrate José Ricardo de Prada —one of the signatories of the judgment in the

from the case in which he will be tried by another of the branches of that investigation.

Specifically, Camps presented an incident of recusal against De Prada in the procedure related to the award to the company of the Gürtel Orange Market plot of the Valencian exhibitor at the Fitur tourism fair in Madrid in 2009, considering that there are "more doubts than reasonable” about his impartiality due to his presumed affinity with the PSOE and United We Can.

But the instructor of this incident in the National Court, José Antonio Mora, in a car to which Efe has had access, rejects the arguments put forward by the former Valencian president and points out that his accusations "are no more than mere suspicions", since " there is no evidence of said personal relationship between Mr. De Prada and any of the parties in the process.”

Camps explained three reasons to remove De Prada, including his participation in the trial of the first stage of the Gürtel plot, which resulted in important convictions, with the certification that the PP profited from the plot and with a story of facts that took for granted the existence of a box b in the game.

The Court rejects this argument and responds that "the expression of a judge in a written judicial resolution is the result of a professional assessment" and "the recusal of a Judge cannot be sought for the mere fact of having legal criteria in a previous sentence, in relationship to which there is no personal or objective identity of the facts prosecuted, beyond dealing with related facts prosecuted in separate pieces.

Another reason was based on what the media published about his candidacy for the General Council of the Judiciary at the proposal of PSOE and United We Can.

The Court reasons that the system for electing members of the CGPJ is endorsed by the TC and adds that Camps "blatantly confuses the legitimate professional interest of all the participants in said selection process with personal or political interest."

Finally, the former Valencian president argued that de Prada was appointed an external member of the advisory commission to restore universal justice in 2018, already with a socialist government.

Nor does this argument convince the Court, which understands that "the magistrate's claim to support a certain approach to universal justice is in no way directly or indirectly related to the specific ideological postulates that support it."