The Supreme Court leaves former judge Fernando Presencia on the verge of going to prison

Fernando Presencia, upon his arrival at the National Court on July 7. Víctor Sainz

Fernando Presencia, a former judge expelled from the race for prevarication, already has his first firm prison sentence.

The Supreme Court has rejected this week the appeal filed by the former magistrate against the sentence that imposed a sentence of 34 months in prison for crimes of false denunciation and slander.

The high court considers proven the maneuvers that he concocted against the chief prosecutor of Talavera de la Reina (Toledo), Ángel Demetrio de la Cruz, whom he accused of corruption, without evidence.

This resolution leaves Presencia on the verge of going to jail, which is also being investigated by the National Court for publishing alleged information that attributes accounts in tax havens to members of high-ranking State institutions without evidence.

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Conspiracy, revenge and togas: the long fall of a prevaricating judge

Through an order dated last Monday, to which EL PAÍS has had access, the Supreme Court dismisses the former magistrate's allegations.

"The Chamber agrees that there is no room for the admission of the aforementioned appeal", conclude the three judges who sign the brief: Manuel Marchena, Leopoldo Puente and Ana María Ferrer.

"[Presence] has not proven, due to the allegations referring to a possible violation of his fundamental rights or a possible error of subsumption, that his appeal meets cassation interest," the high court says.

Now, according to legal sources, it is up to the courts of Toledo to execute the sentence.

The convicted person can appeal to the Constitutional Court.

"This sentence is a reprisal," Presencia commented to his followers on social networks: "What is intended is to send me to prison."

The Supreme Court itself has also fined him this week with 6,000 euros for his "artificial attitude" with "manifest abuse of rights", since he deployed a "delaying maneuver" to make it difficult for this court to resolve his appeal on the 34 months in jail.

The Criminal Chamber detailed that it filed a chain of appeals and challenges against the magistrates who had to pronounce, "of null foundation and all of them inadmissible", whose sole objective was to avoid entering prison or to interpose "a barrier of obstacles" to delay it. .

The false complaint

This story begins in 2015, when Presencia was the senior judge of Talavera.

After Ángel Demetrio de la Cruz began to question his work, the then magistrate filed a complaint against him on July 5, 2015, accusing him of corruption.

This maneuver led to a file in the State Attorney General's Office, which was filed.

But Presence returned to the charge.

Following a "plan" and "fully aware of its falsehood," he filed a new lawsuit against De la Cruz through Manos Limpias, which was filed by the Superior Court of Justice for being "a set of diffuse speculations lacking support and objective and rationally accessible and verifiable basis", as proven by Criminal Court 3 of Talavera and the Provincial Court of Toledo, who sentenced the former judge in first and second instance.

Despite everything, Presencia continued with his attacks against the prosecutor.

"With the same defamatory spirit," he sent letters to the Ombudsman, the president of the CGPJ and the State Attorney General, which he later publicized in the press.

“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.

In addition, "from October 2015 to June 2016, the defendant, knowing that he was not telling the truth, being aware of the resolutions that archived or rejected his complaints and complaints always for the same facts,

Presencia accumulates two other firm sentences of disqualification for prevarication, for benefiting his friends with decisions he made in the court he headed in Talavera de la Reina.

On July 20, 2017, the Supreme Court confirmed the first sentence against Presencia: 10 years of disqualification for filing an open investigation against a driver, "who was a friend of his", who had hit a pedestrian and had fled. .

The second sentence of the high court came on November 14, 2018, when he was sentenced for having shelved a complaint for fraud filed against a person with whom he also "had a friendly relationship."