The judge closes the avenue for investigating the transfer of confidential data from the Tax Agency to Montoro's team.
The Tarragona judge investigating the Treasury scheme involving former minister Cristóbal Montoro has shut down attempts by several victims to investigate whether the Tax Agency (AEAT) handed over confidential and classified data to the former minister's team.
The instructor rejects the appearance of former vice president of the government Rodrigo Rato, the founder of Podemos Juan Carlos Monedero, or the journalist Javier Chicote, considering that the information provided by the former director of the Tax Agency, Santiago Menéndez, to Montoro himself and his chief of staff, Felipe Martínez Rico, does not constitute the commission of a crime of revealing secrets.
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The case file reveals that Menéndez sent more than 100 emails to Montoro's team containing tax information on political enemies, journalists, and public figures such as Rafa Nadal and Baroness Thyssen, as well as judicial assistance reports that were to be submitted to the courts, such as the Rodrigo Rato case, the Pujol case, and the report on the Popular Party's secret slush fund.
Thus, the judge of Tarragona's Investigative Court No. 2 has denied the right to appear in court for several of the victims, arguing that for a crime to be committed, such confidential information must fall into the hands of people who shouldn't have access to it.
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For the judge, the Treasury had the right to have that information because the Tax Agency reports directly to the Ministry then headed by Montoro.
In several rulings, the judge argues that the AEAT is a public law entity attached to the Ministry of Finance, through the State Secretariat for Finance, whose head is appointed by the government at the proposal of the relevant minister.
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"If the Minister of Finance is responsible for the top management of the Secretariat of State that runs the AEAT, we must understand that he is fully authorized to review the content of the AEAT's actions. Therefore, being informed about such actions is part of the functions assigned to him," the resolution states.
"Tax data is undoubtedly confidential; it cannot be made public; not everyone can access it, but in this case, the people who have accessed it are legally authorized," the judge insists.
Read alsoTherefore, according to the investigator, the information transmitted through the analyzed emails does not constitute the object of the crime "because it involves data that, although confidential, is not contained in files, media, archives, or records."
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