The judge demands information from the Government for the investigation against Illa on the "defective" masks

Request documentation from Health and other organizations on the quality analysis and distribution of the material

MADRID, 3 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Investigating Court Number 14 of Madrid has requested the Ministry of Health and other public bodies to send it information in the framework of the investigation it is carrying out against the former head of this portfolio and leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, for "having provided to health personnel --during the first stage of the pandemic-- defective masks without respecting the established administrative procedure and without previously verifying their suitability".

Legal sources have confirmed to Europa Press that the head of said court, Carlos Valle, has commissioned the proceedings indicated by the Provincial Court of Madrid when on December 15 it ordered him to resume the investigations, thus estimating the appeal filed by the State Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM).

Thus, the judge has demanded from the Ministry of Health the distribution and delivery agreements to the autonomous communities of said masks; a copy of the communications received by Aragon and Catalonia on April 10, 2020; and the documentation received from all the autonomous communities on the execution of the removal order.

The Carlos III Health Institute and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (INSST) have also been addressed to issue certification of the results of the analysis of the Garry Galaxi FFP2 N95 masks that were acquired by the Ministry of Health.

The origin of the case is the complaint that the CESM filed on April 27, 2020 in the Supreme Court (TS) against the then Minister of Health, to whom it attributed a crime against the rights of workers "for having provided health personnel with a series of FFP2 N95 masks that did not comply with safety standards (...) without adopting control measures and verification of their suitability prior to their distribution".

In December 2020, the Supreme Court rejected this and other complaints against charges assessed for the management of the pandemic and sent several complaints and complaints to the investigating courts in Madrid.

The CESM complaint fell on Number 14, which inhibited itself by sending the case to the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, considering that it was the competent body to investigate Illa because he was already a member of the Parliament.

However, the matter returned to the Valle court, which agreed to the provisional file on June 30. The CESM appealed alleging that the instructor had relied "exclusively" on a decision adopted by another court in a similar case but whose facts "are not related to those present." The Provincial Court agreed with the union, determining that the cases "are not the same."

"Both cases refer to the pandemic, but while in the procedure processed before the Investigating Court Number 53 it was about not providing the State Security Forces and Corps with the necessary means (quantitative omission), in our case it is about of having provided health personnel with defective masks without respecting the established administrative procedure and without previously verifying their suitability (qualitative omission)," said the court.