In the center, Fernando Presencia, upon his arrival at the National High Court to testify in early July. Víctor Sainz
Conspiracy, revenge, lies, robes and Law. All these factors are intertwined in the story of Fernando Presencia, a judge expelled from the race for prevarication, now turned into an agitator of the system to which he belonged.
Investigated and convicted of filing false accusations, the courts try to stop this former magistrate while he exploits the procedural limits and launches to accuse of corruption, without evidence, many of those who cross his path: be it the secretary of the court that processes his eviction in Talavera de la Reina (Toledo) or the magistrates of the Supreme Court that must decide on the sentence of 34 months in prison that hangs over him.
—Isn't it curious that accounts in tax havens appear to every person who appears in your path?
—EL PAÍS asks Presencia about the publications it publishes on the website of the association it heads, through which it asks for donations.
—Wouldn't it be that the matters that concern me are given to people who are previously corrupted?
Could it be that there is a plot of corruption?
he replies.
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The National Court imputes the former judge Presencia for slandering Supreme Court magistrates
It is just after 10:30 on July 7 when Presencia makes the symbol of victory with her fingers as she leaves the National Court.
Inside the building, the former judge has taken advantage of his right not to testify and has refused to answer questions from Judge Joaquín Gadea, who keeps him charged with crimes of libel and slander, and against the high institutions of the State.
This is the last stop in a long decline that began a decade ago in Valencia and has left victims in its wake.
Prosecutor Ángel Demetrio de la Cruz, who has been battling him for more than five years, is one of them: “Now the artillery comes out.
But why didn't they act sooner?
Why didn't they do anything until he messed with the magistrates of the Supreme Court?
Chapter 1: The Banishment
The irregularities that persecute Presencia began a decade ago, when it boasted of innovating with dation in payment from the Mercantile Court that it occupied in Valencia.
It was a time of wine and roses: he was photographed with politicians and wrote tribunes in the press.
But lawyer José Luis Mazón received suspicious “information”, which he brought to the attention of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ): “They were doing courses for bankruptcy administrators and creating expectations that students were also going to be awarded contests ”, he recalls about an investigation that concluded that Presencia intervened without permission in a university master’s degree, that “he received an economic percentage based on the number of students”, and that “27 of the 44 students were or had been appointed administrators” of your court.
That file cost Presencia the position, but he continued in the race.
The CGPJ
banished him
in 2012: it forced him to be transferred to a place that was at least 100 kilometers from Valencia.
By then, he had already been issuing resolutions for almost two decades: he was appointed a judge in 1996 and, before returning to the position from which he was expelled, he passed through the courts of Azpeitia (Gipuzkoa), Lliria (Valencia) and Elche (Alicante), according to the BOE.
His new and last destination would be Talavera de la Reina: the beginning of the end.
“This extremely unfair decision was made because I invented dation in payment, which was then fatal to the PP, who was making the decision to bail out the banks”, defends Presencia: “[It was] a retaliation.
They made up the story that I was getting paid from the bankruptcy administrators…”.
But the Supreme Court upheld the ruling – a ruling that he underestimates, accusing the rapporteur of the ruling, like many others, of “having accounts in tax havens” without evidence, despite the fact that it was signed by five other judges.
In addition, Presencia refuses to answer whether, as the CGPJ concluded, "27 of the 44 students" of the master's degree were appointed by their court as bankruptcy administrators.
At that moment he cuts off the conversation and "warns" EL PAÍS of a possible lawsuit.
Chapter 2: cronyism
The final fall of the judge begins in El Birrete, a spacious cafe with wooden floors and furniture, dominated by a semicircle-shaped bar from where the waiters dispatch.
Upon landing in Talavera, a city of 80,000 inhabitants, after his banishment, Presencia becomes one more customer of this bar frequented by lawyers, located just a few steps from the city courts and from his house.
Here he ate frequently.
He also alternated on occasions until dawn and forged part of the friendships that would cost him his job, detail several court rulings.
"It is absolutely rational and logical that, as a newcomer, alone, without his family, he sought social relations and that these were between legal professionals," underlines one of those rulings.
In El Birrete he was seen without hesitation with the lawyer Carlos LC and with the businessman Juan Carlos V., whose destinies would end up depending on him.
They not only shared a table and tablecloth on a regular basis, but also trips to Valencia or Marbella and bullfights, according to several witnesses.
Despite the “friendship” they wove, Presencia, head of the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 2 of Talavera, took on two open cases against them —the first, accused of running over a pedestrian and fleeing;
the second, denounced for fraud—and sent them to the trash.
"It was nerve," sums up a city attorney.
For those decisions, the Supreme Court would condemn him twice and expel him from the race.
But that would be years later.
Extract from the ruling of the Supreme Court, where it confirms the friendship between Presencia and the lawyer Carlos LC
The lawyer Jesús Camacho suffered the "abuses" in his flesh: "He did some brutal nonsense at the procedural level."
One of his clients denounced the businessman Juan Carlos V. in 2013 and, according to his account, Presencia tried to "intimidate" them into backing down.
The then judge even accused them of introducing a falsified document in the case: "During a meeting in March 2014, he threatened us that, if we did not give up, he would initiate criminal proceedings against us."
Four years later, the Supreme gave absolute truth to Camacho.
Chapter 3: At War with the Prosecutor
Despite the fact that 15 magistrates of the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of Castilla-La Mancha and the Supreme Court considered the prevarication proven, Presencia affirms that everything was a setup to silence him for denouncing an alleged corruption plot in Talavera.
A false and baseless story, according to a multitude of judicial resolutions and files, which focused on the city's chief prosecutor, Ángel Demetrio de la Cruz, who had begun to question his activity in court: "I began to appeal his resolutions because It did not motivate them and the Provincial Court did not stop revoking and annulling them, ”he details.
Presence then placed him on the target and began a campaign against him.
Fernando Presencia addresses the media in front of the National High Court on July 7. Víctor Sainz
The then magistrate, who also held the position of dean judge of the city, filed a complaint against De la Cruz on July 5, 2015 in the deanery that he headed.
“When he did it, I didn't believe it.
The secretary came to tell me," recalls the prosecutor.
This maneuver led to a file in the State Attorney General's Office, which was archived.
But Presence returned to the charge.
As the Criminal Court of Talavera and the Provincial Court have considered proven, he continued with his "plan" and, "fully aware of its falsity", filed a new complaint against the representative of the public ministry through Clean Hands, which it was archived by the TSJ for being “a set of diffuse speculations lacking support and an objective, rationally accessible and verifiable basis.”
The setbacks did not stop him.
“With the same defamatory spirit”, six magistrates have concluded, he sent letters to the Ombudsman, the president of the CGPJ and the State Attorney General, which he later publicized in the press.
He also filed another complaint with the Supreme Court.
“He Acts with reckless disregard for the truth [...].
He made false accusations despite being aware of the different resolutions that filed his complaints, ”says Marta Vicente, the magistrate who sentenced him in the first instance to 34 months in prison for false accusation and slander against the prosecutor.
She, of course, has also been accused without evidence of being part of the "plot" and of receiving bribes through accounts in Andorra.
"The file of the crimes imputed to [De la Cruz] is firm and repeated ad nauseam," highlights the Provincial Court, which confirmed the prison sentence (currently appealed to the Supreme Court).
This judicial body details that Presencia commits "a true fraud of law": "It recurrently presents identical complaints before various judicial authorities so that there are live proceedings at all times."
“Presence has been part of the system.
He knows how it works and that it's very slow, and he messes everything up," says Javier González de Rivera, De la Cruz's lawyer.
"I have experienced harassment and demolition since 2015," says the prosecutor, who was forced to "undress to prove his innocence."
The burden of proof was reversed: he sent the TSJ all the documentation (such as the house purchase deed and his mortgage) to disprove the accusations.
But the process lasted a while, in which he was criminalized.
One of the episodes that hurt him the most occurred when he went to court and two women pointed him out, shouting: "Look, there's the corrupt man!"
“He was on everyone's lips, and more so in a small city like Talavera.
People said: 'There will be something,' adds his lawyer, who adds: “No one from the judiciary, nor from the State Attorney General's Office, did anything.
Chapter 4: The Dooms
In February 2016, the CGPJ definitively removes Presencia from his court – to which he will never return – after the TSJ opened the first trial for favoring his friends.
He thus ceased to occupy the seat of the head of the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 2 of Talavera, where thousands of procedures were resolved each year.
From that moment, the resolutions against him follow one another.
In May of that year, the TSJ imposed the first conviction for prevarication and disqualified him.
The second will arrive in July 2017. Both were confirmed by the Supreme Court.
In the Judiciary they repeat that he is expelled from the race, but he says that he is still a judge.
His argument: "The King did not want to execute her."
In July 2019, another court sentenced him to seven months in prison for slandering the president of the Superior Court of Justice of the community, Vicente Rouco, whom he accused of "negotiating" with the president of Manos Limpias the withdrawal of the procedure against the prosecutor. From the cross.
However, in 2020, the Provincial Court revoked this punishment: despite confirming that his statements were "false", "impertinent" and "regrettable";
they were made "using ambiguous terms" that prevent them from having the "offensive, insulting or vexatious charge" necessary to be considered a crime.
Chapter 5: The Supreme, in the spotlight
The resolutions against Presencia have continued to accumulate, but one of them is key to understanding his next movements: the 34-month prison sentence imposed by the court at the end of 2020, ratified by the Provincial Court in 2021. The former judge decided to resort to Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on whether to confirm it or not.
And, since then, the magistrate has activated two fronts.
On the one hand, he has deployed a plan of "chain challenges" in an "indiscriminate" and "abusive" way against the magistrates who must address the matter, according to the high court in an order dated June 1, 2022.
On the other hand, he has published on the website of his association a whole battery of alleged information about accounts in tax havens: “Scandal in the Supreme Court!
Caught with accounts in tax havens 9 of the 16 magistrates of its Criminal Chamber ”, prays one of them.
Does not provide evidence.
According to her, the accusations are based on complaints that he receives in a computer mailbox that he maintains to combat corruption.
—Doesn't it arise that he is publicizing accusations that are false?
EL PAÍS asks the Presence.
"But they will have to prove it [that they are false]," he replies.
This way of acting is not trivial.
Presence encourages your followers to spread your posts so that they "rank better in Google" and have the highest possible visibility.
In a video on YouTube, he himself acknowledges that he is looking for the judges to denounce him: "Because that way, they force themselves to step aside," he says in reference to the case pending before the Supreme Court.
As explained by one of the magistrates of the high court, he thus places them in a devilish dilemma: if they do not denounce him, it seems that they agree with him;
but, if they do, they must be excluded from the process and he, therefore, achieves his objective and the cause is delayed.
Several Supreme Court magistrates decided to bring the facts to the attention of the Prosecutor's Office.
The president of the Criminal Chamber, Manuel Marchena, also sent a letter to the president of the CGPJ, where he said: “Irreversible damage is being caused to the credibility of the Supreme Court.
It suffers, not only the personal image of those affected, but the constitutional presuppositions that legitimize the exercise of the jurisdictional function.
We believe that not only the honorability of some magistrates is at stake”.
The public ministry made a move and then filed a complaint with the National High Court, which fell on the instructor Joaquín Gadea, who had already ordered Presencia to be investigated in April to find out if he had fabricated "
ex profeso "
” documentation to be included in a complaint against José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former Prime Minister, and Dolores Delgado, then State Attorney General.
Chapter 6: Looking for the money
Capture of the Acodap website, where it asks for donations, with the photograph of the former judge Presencia in the background, before the National Court ordered its closure.
In 2018, Presencia registered the Association against Corruption and in Defense of Public Action (Acodap) in the registry of the Ministry of the Interior.
This will play a key role from then on.
According to the former judge, through her he receives the alleged complaints that he later disseminates — social networks and conspiracy channels have become his great allies — and, on her behalf, he goes to court.
He also uses it to ask for money: “Acodap needs financing to continue.
The judicial attrition to fight is expensive, as is buying information from our sources (who also do hard work and take high risks).
Contribute with us.
Your support is the difference between following or not,” he tweeted.
This collection effort worries the justice system.
This was warned by Marchena in the letter sent to the CGPJ: “Everything indicates that Presencia may be obtaining economic contributions from unsuspecting citizens who believe that the donation they offer is going to be used to search for information or evidence that demonstrates the [alleged] corruption. of the magistrates of this Chamber.
In fact, Judge Gadea has ordered the Civil Guard to investigate his bank accounts and financial products.
“How can a person with two firm convictions for prevarication be the president of an association that claims to fight against corruption?
Prevarication is a form of corruption”, asks prosecutor De la Cruz: “It is the world upside down”.
"Speculations" and false accusations
Margarita Robles, Defense Minister, has been one of Presencia's targets.
In conversation with EL PAÍS, as in an intervention in a Cuatro program, the former judge affirms that the politician "took money" abroad from "bribes".
To support it, he adds that the source of his information is the CNI and that the National Court "says that it is true."
According to him, three magistrates of the Criminal Chamber confirmed it in an order dated March 24, but concluded that they could not investigate it because it was prescribed.
However, that resolution does not consider that accusation proven: said opinion, consulted by this newspaper, ratifies the filing of the case ordered by the Central Court of Instruction 3, which described the wording of the complaint as "incoherent and unconnected."
It's more,
The Criminal Chamber delves into the fact that Acodap uses "speculative terms" and does not provide "any data on the very serious facts reported or on the identity of the victims, making any further corroboration impossible and, at the same time, what was reported implausible."
By insisting on this contradiction, Presencia then alleges that he has also denounced the three judges of the Criminal Chamber.
This is not the only erroneous interpretation that he has spread about judicial decisions.
In April, Acodap also maintained that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Dolores Delgado had been charged by the National Court.
It's not like that either.
These alleged accusations never occurred.
After receiving the Presence complaint, the judge simply opened "proceedings."
In other words, given the account of the events described, he gave the case a number to be able to process it and request his opinion from the Prosecutor's Office.
It is the most common practice and does not imply the imputation of anyone.
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