Francisco Granados, former secretary general of the PP in Madrid, former senator and alleged leader of the Punic corruption plot, maintains that it is a "contradiction" and a "contradiction" that he is going to sit on the bench of the accused while the former leader of the formation and president of the Community of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, has been exonerated.
In the appeal that he has presented in the National Court against his recent prosecution by the box b of the Madrid PP, Granados emphasizes that Aguirre had greater responsibilities than he in the control of the bank accounts and, therefore, of the financing of the party.
The former general secretary of the popular Madrid, who is already firmly condemned in another piece of
the Púnica case
, cites Aguirre in his writing on twenty occasions and also points to her successor at the head of the regional Executive, Ignacio González, whom the judge has also exonerated.
Both are, says Granados, the people who "could have managed or known to enter within their faculties" what happened in the party's accounts.
The former leader of the Madrid PP charges against the investigation of the Civil Guard, which he accuses of having focused his investigations on turning him into "the main artist of all this copla".
Granados is accused of electoral crime, bribery and influence peddling.
He is the second former position of the Community of Madrid prosecuted in the Púnica
case
—after the former head of Communication, Isabel Gallego— who points to Aguirre and González as ultimately responsible for the alleged irregularities.
In his 115-page brief, Granados tries to disassociate himself from the irregular financing of the PP, which has been investigated in one of the separate pieces, number nine, of
the Púnica case
, and in which the judge of the National Court Manuel García- Castellón, following the criteria of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, recently prosecuted him and seven other people and two companies, although he exonerated another 71 who were charged, including the former presidents and leaders of the Madrid PP Aguirre and González.
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The investigation, which began after the discovery of an agenda in the possession of Granados with annotations that included alleged deliveries of cash by businessmen to pay for rallies, focused on three electoral campaigns: the regional ones of 2007 and 2011, where Aguirre it swept with an absolute majority;
and the 2008 general elections, in which Mariano Rajoy was a candidate.
Finally, the magistrate considered, like Anticorruption, that the alleged irregularities of the 2007 and 2008 elections had prescribed, and the prosecution has only been for those of 2011 ―in which the PP allegedly spent four million euros in black, in addition to the 2.9 million recognized by the Court of Auditors― and for the award of public contracts to improve
online reputation
of senior PP officials in social networks and on the internet.
In the 2011 campaign, Granados is awarded a very secondary role as its director, and assures that he never received cash to pay for it nor did he have any control over the management of the funds.
For the latter he blames "solely and exclusively" the former manager of the formation, Beltrán Gutiérrez.
The former popular leader maintains that in the only campaign that is already being investigated, his was a “testimonial, decorative or merely screen role, to avoid rumors, dimes and diretes or political speculations that could be used by the opposition party before the elections. ”, since, he insists, by then he had already been “defenestrated and decapitated” by Aguirre from his positions within the party.
“He was no longer a trusted person,” he assures.
In this sense, the defense brief of the former mayor of Valdemoro between 1999 and 2003 emphasizes that, "in the 30 pages that the order dedicates to analyzing the electoral expenses with the different providers, there is not a single mention of an participation of any kind by Mr. Granados, no relationship with invoices, payments, concerts or meetings”.
“Why then do we insist on placing it in the incriminating stage of the crime?
It is evident that if he had participated, his photo, his seal, his signature or identification would have appeared in all those descriptions that are contained in the car itself.
If he is not there for something, it will be ”, concludes his defense.
Granados argues that the function of "discrediting, controlling and contradicting" the then manager of the party for his management of the funds belonged to "the ordinary organs of the party", in reference to the leadership of the Madrid PP that Aguirre headed at the time and of which self-excludes.
"It seems to us a contradiction to maintain an accusation thesis against someone who, due to the organization chart, lacks power," he points out.
And he remembers that in the 2011 campaign, Ignacio González, who was then his greatest political rival within the PP, did have responsibilities, whom he points to as the person who “controlled because of his interest in that campaign [he was number two on the lists] all the acts derived from it in union with the president of the party, Esperanza Aguirre”.
Conversation between Aguirre and González
The former leader of the PP collects in his letter a conversation intervened by the Civil Guard in March 2017 between González and Aguirre and incorporated into the summary in which, although both deny that Fundescam, the party's foundation in Madrid, had participated in the financing of the campaigns, admit that the PP could have exceeded the electoral spending limit, despite which neither of them has been prosecuted.
Granados wonders why, if the judge has not considered this dialogue sufficient to send both to the bench, he has decided to do it with him.
In any case, Granados believes that these facts would be prescribed.
He uses a similar argument to defend himself against the accusation of having diverted public funds to finance the work of reputation and positioning on the Internet that two companies belonging to computer expert Alejandro de Pedro, also accused, carried out for him and other party leaders.
Granados insists that the president of Madrid and other investigators who also benefited from these activities have not been prosecuted when the magistrate concluded that they had no knowledge of the contracting of the works or their development or how they were paid.
"The only one of the subjects of said reports finally charged for those works has been my representative for the existence of a 2010 report that, apparently, according to the order, was not paid," highlights his lawyer, who asks that, "by principle of equality”,
Granados, who recalls that he spent almost three years in preventive detention after his arrest in 2014, accuses Judge García-Castellón of applying different criteria "when considering the facts regarding one and the other accused", and charges harshly against the investigation of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, which he accuses of "anxiety" to incriminate him "actively and passively in all reports".
Nor is the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor exempt from his criticism, which he criticizes for initially accusing him "addently and without any proof" of a 700 million euro fraud, "so that then barely a year ago he modified this amount to five million euros in the assets of the investigated.
Among the eight people finally prosecuted, in addition to Granados and Gutiérrez, are Borja Sarasola, former counselor with Ignacio González;
businessman Alejandro de Pedro and journalist Isabel Gallego.
The latter, who was the general director of the media of the Community of Madrid between 2003 and 2015 (with Aguirre as president until 2012 and then with González), has also appealed the prosecution of her with a letter along the same lines as the one now presented. by Granada.
Gallego considers "unfair,
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