The Prosecutor's Office asks to convict Villarejo and warns: "No one can go unpunished" even if they "try to hinder the courts"

He underlines that “no cause, however ungovernable or unmanageable, can remain unjudged”

MADRID, 6 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Prosecutor's Office has requested this Tuesday during the trial that is being carried out in the National Court for three separate pieces of the 'Tándem' macro-cause a conviction against the retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, a ruling with which it hopes that an "important message will be launched ": "No one can go unpunished no matter how much they try to hinder the actions of the courts inside or outside the process."

This is how the anti-corruption prosecutor Miguel Serrano has expressed himself during the presentation of the final report of the Public Ministry in the oral hearing in which Villarejo faces 83 years in prison for the alleged crimes committed in the execution of the private projects 'Iron', ' Land' and 'Painter'.

At the close of the extensive exhibition of the Prosecutor's Office, which began this Monday, Serrano has made it clear that "no cause, because it is ungovernable or unmanageable, can go unpunished." "Although we find ourselves before an obsolete criminal process, before an old shell that is still capable of sailing the seas of organized crime and of these objective and complex phenomena such as the one that is being prosecuted", he maintained.

The prosecutor has referred in this way to the so-called 'Villarejo case', the immense macro-cause made up of more than thirty separate pieces in which the Central Court of Instruction Number 6 investigates the private commissions that the commissioner would have carried out while in active.

And it is that, in Serrano's opinion, as in the case of 'Iron', 'Land' and 'Pintor' also "the multiple separate pieces of the Tándem case will reach sentencing". "With all its consequences", he added.

By way of conclusion, the prosecutor has trusted to have lived up to the trial, the first that has brought Villarejo to the bench. "The Public Prosecutor's Office has not been guided, in any way, by seeking the maximum penalties or the maximum crimes, but from the strictly legal parameters: those imposed by the penal code," he asserted.

This Tuesday's session has also left a discussion between Villarejo's lawyer, Antonio José García Cabrera, and Serrano himself. The lawyer has protested the "insults" and the "continuous line of press headlines" used by the Prosecutor's Office to refer to his client, whom the representative of the Public Ministry has referred to as an "extortionist."

"The description of extortionist is the only one that corresponds to the conduct followed by Villarejo and his henchmen," said prosecutor Miguel Serrano, provoking the protest of the commissioner's lawyer. "We are forced by the prosecutor's epithets for the court to protect the presumption of innocence," Cabrera snapped.

The lawyer himself has recalled that in Monday's session the Prosecutor's Office also referred to Villarejo as a "machista", some "terms" that from his point of view "exceed" the final report that the prosecutor must expose. "Calling other people henchmen carries a burden that exceeds the qualification of some facts and behaviors," he criticized.

In that session held this Monday at the National High Court, the prosecutor referred to Villarejo as a "person wrapped under the flag of the patriot" who used "coarse, homophobic, macho and slightly gothic language that hides the corrupt police officer" .

In this context, and despite the fact that the lawyer has threatened to put himself at the "height" of the Prosecutor's Office when it is his turn to present his report, the president of the court, Ángela Murillo, has ruled out "calling the attention" of the representative of the Public Ministry.

"The prosecutor is accusing him of some crimes and considers that it is appropriate to assign those epithets to him, and the court is not going to correct him. You can do what you want in your report," the magistrate replied to the lawyer.

For his part, the prosecutor Miguel Serrano has taken the floor again to make it clear that calling Villarejo "corrupt is the most natural thing in the world." "We are accusing an active commissioner of a crime of bribery: that is corruption. And a henchman is one who in concert follows another," he explained.

In this line, Serrano has pointed out that "in the framework of a subjective concert of development of a criminal activity", the word "henchman can have some connotations". "For the lawyers who, like Cabrera, comb gray hair like me and have read novels by Marcial Lafuente Estefanía (that word) may sound bad, like rustling or pillage. But a henchman is the one who follows another," he clarified.

This Tuesday's session concluded with the final report of the representation of the Balder law firm, which would have been among Villarejo's objectives as part of the 'Iron' project.

Balder is a law firm specialized in patents and trademarks created in 2012 by former partners of Herrero

In the lawyer's opinion, it has been shown that there was espionage "despite the boundless imagination displayed by the accused", who have offered an "illusory version of the facts". "The reality, which is what she has accredited with the test, far exceeds her fiction," she has maintained.

Thus, he has stated that everything that has been exposed has "conclusively cleared up any hint of doubt regarding both how the events occurred and their criminal nature and the participation of the accused, causing serious damage" to Balder .