Monedero asks the 'Neurona' judge to exonerate him from the case after the Cybercrime report

MADRID, 16 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The co-founder of Podemos Juan Carlos Monedero has asked the judge investigating the so-called 'Neurona case' to exonerate him from the procedure since the report of the Central Cybercrime Unit of the National Police ruled out that he manipulated the emails in which the invoice of 26,200 euros --which he issued to the consultant-- for which he is being investigated.

The leader's defense has presented a brief, to which Europa Press has had access, before the Investigating Court Number 42 of Madrid in which he requests the provisional dismissal and archiving of the investigation that has been going on against him since 2021.

Purse is listed as investigated in the 'Neurona case' for an invoice issued on December 30, 2018 for a value of $30,000 for "300 hours of face-to-face consulting in Buenos Aires, Mexico and Colombia" for which on January 25, 2019 received a bank deposit of 26,200.31 euros from Neurona Consulting.

Both the judge and the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the Police believed that it was a false invoice that would cover up an alleged commission that Monedero would have received for his alleged mediation for Podemos to hire the Spanish subsidiary of Neurona Consulting - -Neurona Comunidad-- for the general elections held on April 28, 2019.

Now, Monedero defends that after the procedures carried out "it is clarified that the payment in question could not be an intermediation, since on the date of writing the invoice, the holding of general elections was not even planned."

His defense considers that, with the report of the Cybercrime Unit issued on February 3, "it is undoubtedly clarified that the emails presented by the person under investigation on March 15, 2021 previously existed before the alleged creation suspected by the UDEF , and they were not created "ad hoc" as was maintained without any scientific support".

In addition, he stresses that to date "all the procedures have been carried out" that the judge considered pertinent to "clarify the suitability" of his accusation. "And no illegal action has emerged from all of this," he remarked.

Within the framework of the investigation, the agents of the Police Cybercrime Unit issued a report - to which Europa Press had access - in which they explained that Monedero "does not have the capacity to modify an email already sent", given that "this data is stored in services managed by Google to which users do not have access (...) beyond being able to send or receive."

In his statement dated March 15, 2021, Monedero denied that the invoice in question was false and attributed the errors it contained to the fact that he is not an expert in making invoices. That same day he provided some 'emails' with a Mexican Neurona partner, which included the trips made and the hours of work attributable to each one, and an attached document called an 'invoice'. He also gave a history of the tickets issued in his name by Iberia in 2018 that included flights to Mexico, Colombia and Argentina.

The head of the Investigating Court Number 42 of Madrid asked the UDEF to check the dates of the emails, at the same time that he asked Iberia to deliver the plane tickets that appear in the flight history. In turn, he claimed from Monedero himself the content of the 'links' of the acts in which he participated during his work trips for Neurona.

In March 2022, the UDEF issued a report in which it concluded that Monedero issued a "false and ad hoc" invoice with the aim of "masking the real reason" for which it received the 26,200 euros from Neurona. Faced with such a conclusion by the agents, the defense of the co-founder of Podemos presented a letter in which he accused the Unit of "misrepresenting the truth" in its report.

Recently, the Cybercrime Unit -by virtue of a request made by the court last January- the "authenticity" of the emails and has ensured that Monedero has not been able to "alter" or "manipulate" their content.

Thus, the co-founder of the 'morada' formation has requested the archive of the investigation against him, understanding that the "fact" that he is accused of "does not constitute a criminal offense" and that he is oblivious to the only diligence of investigation that remains to be carried out in the 'Neurona case', in reference to the expert report on the cost of the services provided by the consultant to Podemos for the electoral campaign for the April 2019 elections.