The judge reproached the general for risking the "seriousness" of the Civil Guard with business visits to its headquarters

"They tell me: 'I'm going to have a coffee with you and a friend is coming'; and I say: 'Well, come on'"

MADRID, 2 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The judge investigating the 'Mediator case', Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceres, reproached the General of the Civil Guard Francisco Espinosa, one of the alleged leaders of the plot, for endangering "the image and seriousness" of the institution by receiving there to the businessmen who would have agreed to pay bribes in exchange for political favors, one of the many reproaches he directed at him during the statement he gave on February 16, to which Europa Press has had access.

Lorenzo-Cáceres made this statement after beginning to ask the now retired general about his relationship with one of the businessmen identified by the judicial investigation, Alberto Montesdeoca. "That is a young boy, it seems to me, who has a hunt," Espinosa replied.

Given Espinosa's apparent doubts, the judge reminded him that "he visited him in Guzmán 'El Bueno', at the Civil Guard headquarters." "If you have nothing to do with this, what is the purpose of putting the institution, the image and the seriousness that it obviously projects in the middle?" she questioned.

"I didn't know who this man was. They tell me: 'I'm going to have a coffee with you and a friend is coming'; and I say: 'Well, come on.' And then they tell me who he is, that he has a cheese shop familiar, which has good cheese", he recounted, adding that later they went to eat together. "But this was to get him back into Marco Antonio's network," he added, alluding to the supposed "mediator," businessman Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte.

Given this response, the magistrate insisted: "Did you know that the cheesemaker had a file with the return of a subsidy of more than 70,000 euros and that the purpose he sought was to solve his problems?" "I couldn't do anything or did anything, because there are things that I have very clear... And I don't have any competition or know anyone or was going to do anything," he settles.

Along the same lines, the instructor makes him ugly because he denies knowing both the then socialist deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo and his nephew Taishent Fuentes Gutiérrez, whom the judicial investigation places at the top of the plot along with the general himself and Navaro Tacoronte.

"But they got to meet and eat together," she stressed, alluding to Fuentes Curbelo's nephew, before General Espinosa's repeated refusal when asked if he knew him.

The magistrate is also interested in a moment of the interrogation for the prepaid cards that, according to the summary - to which this news agency has had access -, General Espinosa demanded in exchange for moving his supposed influences.

He assured that no businessman gave him anything nor did he demand it, affirming that "the only one" who told him that he would give him a prepaid card was Navarro Tacoronte so that when they started working together, once the general retired, he would use it for "expenses protocols". "But he never delivered it to me," he maintained.

Faced with this, the judge snapped: "And how is it possible that there are conversations of yours requesting one of those little cards." "He told me that he was going to give me a card and I said: 'When are you going to give me the card?' But he never gave it to me."

However, the judge ends up asking if it is not questioned that "it is part of the framework", given her intervention, with meetings with businessmen whose purpose is "to enter into contracts and operations": "Don't you think about it?"