The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has opposed carrying out a search of the office of former socialist deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo, alias ‘Tito Berni’, in Congress, as demanded by the Police, but it has supported requesting authorization for it to be carried out. seize their electronic devices in the framework of the investigation of the ‘Mediator case’.
In a letter, to which RTVE has had access, the prosecutor Jaime Serrano-Jover responds to the request made by the Technological Crimes Unit of the National Police to magistrate Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceres for “unrestricted and exclusive access to the office of the Congress of Deputies assigned to the person investigated“.
“Assessing article 66.3 of the Spanish Constitution, which provides that the Cortes Generales are inviolable, the Public Ministry cannot rule in favor of what was requested in the preceding official letter,” Serrano-Jover alleges.
However, “with the aim of complying with the purpose pursued by the instruction”, he proposes addressing the Congress itself so that it is the Chamber that authorizes the Police to search the office, “for the delivery and intervention of the computer terminals or data and information storage devices, documents or any other effects belonging to the person investigated”.
It also supports that, “once the computer equipment is in the possession of the acting agents”, they “carry out the practice of the procedures that are included in the previous police official letter, authorizing, even, the change of access codes with the preventions logical and appropriate to this measure”.
Crimes of bribery, influence peddling and belonging to a criminal group
The former socialist deputy was arrested on February 20, six days before the judge ordered the arrest of the other 11 involved, once he had confirmation that he was no longer a member of Congress, since against a deputy in the Cortes Generales Only the Supreme Court can proceed criminally.
He appeared before the magistrate on the 22nd and was released on charges of bribery, influence peddling and belonging to an organized criminal group, because the only accusation brought up to that moment, the Prosecutor’s Office, did not request any precautionary measure against him.
Throughout the summary, there is various evidence that Fuentes Curbelo received businessmen in the socialist parliamentary group who allegedly requested the influence of the plot to obtain public contracts or subsidies, or to get rid of sanctions.