The story of how the 'Cursach case', the largest legal case in the Balearic Islands, ended without defendants

The shadow of the irregularities during the investigation process of the

annuls almost a decade of investigations.

The Prosecutor's Office withdrew all the accusations that weighed against 17 investigated for favoring the business of the Mallorcan leisure businessman.

The investigating judge and the prosecutor who led the investigation are on the edge of the dock accused of pressuring witnesses and leaking information.

"This procedure is a total failure of the administration of justice."

These words came out, between pauses and tears of emotion, from the mouth of the anti-corruption prosecutor Tomás Herranz during the last session of the trial of

that since June it was judging the biggest plot of police and business corruption in the Balearic Islands and that it had been investigated for nine years.

The Prosecutor's Office confirmed during that day, in the processing of reports, what had advanced days before: that it withdrew all the accusations against the 17 people who sat on the bench accused of crimes such as belonging to a criminal organization, threats or prevarication.

There had been 24 defendants right at the beginning of the sessions.

"This report, more than justifying the withdrawal of the accusation, has another objective, which is to acknowledge to the defendants that they have suffered an injustice and that the change in the Prosecutor's Office is due to a minimal attempt to repair the damage," said Herranz, almost without to be able to talk about emotion.

The room erupted in applause, some lawyers wiped away tears,

the defendants rose to their feet and the president of the court interrupted the session to give those present a breather.

But to understand how one of the largest judicial processes in the Balearic Islands, with dozens of detainees with months in provisional prison behind them, has ended in absolutely nothing, you have to go back many years.

Bartolomé Cursach, upon his arrival at the courts of Palma on March 3, 2017 to testify.C.

CLADERA (Eph)

At the beginning of March 2017, the image of the all-powerful Mallorcan nightlife businessman Bartolomé Cursach dressed in light blue feathers, scruffy, getting out of a National Police van in handcuffs to testify in court, after his arrest on March 28. February, filled the news and newspapers of the Balearic Islands.

Cursach has always been an elusive character, subscribed to silence, careful of his image and wrapped in a multitude of popular legends about which no one in Mallorca knows what is true and what is not.

Rumors have always followed the man who built an empire of nightclubs, restaurants and pubs in the main tourist areas of Majorca and who for decades had been ignored by no one.

The image of him handcuffed was surprising, although the judicial environment had been hearing about his possible arrest for weeks,

The judicial atmosphere in Palma, where everyone knows each other, was already very heated when the investigation reached its zenith with the entry of the tycoon into preventive detention.

After that, the case went downhill that led to the end of a judge and a prosecutor, about to be tried for irregularities during the investigation, another judge who has already been prosecuted, and a courtroom that began with 24 people. accused and has ended with a mass acquittal.

Only one of the private accusations maintains the accusation against two municipal agents for an alleged crime of continued coercion and claims two years in prison for each one.

the beginnings

Rewinding to the beginning of this story, we return to 2013, a time when judicial instructions stemming from cases of political corruption boiled over, when the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office of the islands had four officials to resolve the scandals that had stemmed from the PP government of Jaume Matas and the Majorcan Union of Maria Antònia Munar.

That summer, a police operation against the Los Angeles del Infierno motorcycle gang revealed the ties that some of them had with agents of the Palma Local Police, who had some officers under suspicion for the alleged rigging of an internal promotion contest.

The names of the agents were intertwined in both investigations, directed at that time by Judge Carmen González with the help of the then anti-corruption prosecutor Miguel Ángel Subirán, a man with an explosive character who had participated in the accusation of other processes for political corruption.

In that genesis, the thesis that some agents acted in collaboration with local businessmen to extort and collect bribes in leisure establishments began to take shape.

In the background, the BCM nightclub, in Magaluf, the symbol of the closed Cursach empire.Samuel Aranda

González changed destination and in 2015 the investigation fell to Manuel Penalva, in charge of Investigating Court Number 12 of Palma, who from that moment devoted himself to this investigation.

An accomplished hunter, a man of character and fixed ideas, he did not mess around and began to develop multiple ramifications in tandem with the prosecutor Subirán and four agents from the Laundering group of the Balearic National Police, with whom they created a closed gang. in which they all went together.

His presence around the Vía Alemania courts, always in a group, his interrogation and investigation methods, and his personal treatment of the detainees aroused strong criticism from defense lawyers and prosecutors, who did not share the harsh ways of the researchers.

Between 2015 and 2017, the investigation focused on a parade of witnesses through the investigative courts: businessmen with businesses who said they had been harmed by local police officers —who were often sent to pretrial detention after testifying—, night workers who accused the police of corrupt practices, municipal officials and a name, that of Bartolomé Cursach, who began to sound in the appearances as the instigator of the extortions that were practiced on night businessmen of his competition.

At this stage, multiple confessions were covered by the figure of the protected witness, who gave free rein to Martian narratives that have subsequently been confirmed as mere lucubrations.

Some in the mouth of the son of the drug matriarch of the town of Son Banya,

who assured that he paid bribes to the police, others from a former worker who claimed to have witnessed parties with drugs between policemen and prostitutes and, with special relevance, those of the owner of a brothel, who turned out not to be one, who assured that she had an agenda with the names of PP politicians in the City Hall who supposedly frequented it at expenses paid by the businessman.

"There has been an unjustified use of protected witnesses, deliberate bias against the prisoner and an uncritical and irrational follow-up," the prosecutor denounced on this point in the last session of the trial.

who assured that he had an agenda with the names of PP politicians in the City Hall who supposedly frequented him at expenses paid by the businessman.

"There has been an unjustified use of protected witnesses, deliberate bias against the prisoner and an uncritical and irrational follow-up," the prosecutor denounced on this point in the last session of the trial.

who assured that he had an agenda with the names of PP politicians in the City Hall who supposedly frequented him at expenses paid by the businessman.

"There has been an unjustified use of protected witnesses, deliberate bias against the prisoner and an uncritical and irrational follow-up," the prosecutor denounced on this point in the last session of the trial.

The chat

With these wickerwork, the judge and the prosecutor assembled the accusation against the businessman, who was finally arrested at the end of February 2017 together with the general director of his companies and charged with more than 15 crimes, including homicide and corruption of minors.

With even more heated spirits in the corridors of the judicial headquarters and in the belief that the investigators were only looking for fame and notoriety, one of the defenses made public the messages that the judge had sent to protected witness number 31, the owner of the brothel, in which he insulted the defense lawyers and tried to direct the statement of the woman, who retracted everything and accused the judge and the prosecutor of having invented the whole story.

The house of cards began to crumble and just one year after Cursach's arrest,

With Penalva out and an investigation practically finished but which was beginning to leak, the matter then passed into the hands of a third judge, Miquel Florit, who arrested two of the policemen from the Laundering group on suspicion that they were leaking information from a Summary declared secret.

He confiscated their mobile phones and the existence of a WhatsApp chat between the investigators was discovered in which a multitude of dubious and illegal practices applied to those investigated, insults, questionable methods and fixations with some of them, were uncovered.

"They are sons of bitches, you have to crush them."

"If they have the balls to make him resign and leave his deputy certificate, they must be detained with handcuffs, without regard."

Phrases like these plagued the researchers' private chat for months,

a behavior ratified later by two National Police inspectors who prepared several reports in which they were in charge of documenting the procedures that were followed during the investigation and the lies of some of the witnesses.

In his attempt to prosecute those responsible for the leaks, Judge Florit also ordered the seizure of the mobile phones and computers of two journalists, a decision that led him to trial and put an end to his career as a judge.

Days before everything exploded and these conversations between the investigators were discovered, the prosecutor Subirán and his partner Juan Carrau presented an indictment for the main piece of the case against 24 people who were accused of up to 13 crimes related to favorable treatment. granted to the businessman, for whom they demanded eight and a half years in prison.

Shortly after, prosecutor Subirán received medical leave and a year later he was retired early after the

publish its cessation of activity.

The case entered the Provincial Court waiting for a date to be set, but it was not easy to find a trial court.

Six magistrates abstained, considering that after resolving 158 appeals since 2014 they compromised their appearance of impartiality.

They did not obtain protection and with the courtroom already constituted 10 days after the start of the trial, which began in June, the prosecutor Tomás Herranz, appointed by Madrid to continue with the process after the departure of Subirán, coming from the capital and totally unrelated to the prosecution from the Balearic Islands, showed his cards facing the trial:

Bartolomé Cursach at the exit of the Provincial Court of the Balearic Islands with his wife and daughter, on Tuesday. Isaac Buj (Europa Press)

With this movement, he threw down the instruction carried out by Subirán, who will be tried in the coming months together with Penalva and the four money laundering agents for the alleged crimes committed during the investigation.

That shadow of suspicion, that of illegal practices against the defendants, has flown over all the days of the trial, where doubtful testimonies have been heard, reports from the National Police have been reeled off in which it is verified that many of the denunciations of the businessmen Due to an abuse of inspections in its premises, they were never verified and interrogations of the defenses have been seen, which have placed the witnesses on a tightrope to dismantle the case.

The private accusations, which represented businessmen from the leisure competition of Cursach,

"I was about to commit suicide, I had my hand on the railing of a bridge" confessed the general director of the Cursach group, Bartolomé Sbert, in the turn of the last word.

“I decided to go through this alone.

I told what is now my ex-wife that I wanted to be alone and for her to have a normal life, because I knew what she was going to go through," said Carlos Tomás, one of the local police officers who broke down and could only speak between sobs. .

"I believe in justice again," said another of the agents, Gabriel Torres, after explaining his experiences in recent years.

Those now acquitted are considering claiming compensation for the time they spent in pretrial detention, since eight of them spent several months in jail.