Blow to Spanish PM as attorney general found guilty in leak case

Original article by Sam Jones in Madrid

Spain’s top prosecutor has been banned from his post for two years after being found guilty of leaking confidential information about a tax case involving a businessman who is the boyfriend of a prominent rightwing politician.

Álvaro García Ortiz, who has served as attorney general since 2022, was also fined €7,300 (£6,428), and ordered to pay €10,000 in damages to the businessman, Alberto González Amador.

The verdict, announced by the supreme court on Thursday, will come as a blow to Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who had insisted on García Ortiz’s innocence, and who is under increasing pressure because of a series of corruption allegations facing his family and his allies.

García Ortiz, the first serving Spanish attorney general to face trial, had denied leaking personal information about González Amador to journalists when the businessman was under investigation for alleged tax fraud.

According to media reports last year, González Amador’s legal team had proposed a plea deal with prosecutors that would allow him to avoid a trial and prison in exchange for admitting to alleged tax offences.

The businessman is the partner of the rightwing populist politician Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who, as Madrid’s regional president, has been one of Sánchez’s most outspoken critics. Ayuso, a member of the People’s party (PP), had claimed that the information had been leaked to the press in an attempt to damage her reputation, while González Amador told the court that the attorney general had “completely destroyed me”.

But García Ortiz had insisted that he had neither leaked the information nor had it leaked, and his defence had said there was “absolutely no evidence” that he was the source of the leak. Journalists who were called to give evidence also denied that the attorney general had fed them the information.

Government sources said that while they respected the verdict, they did not agree with it, adding that the administration was grateful to García Ortiz for his work as attorney general. They said the process to choose his replacement would begin in the coming days.

The case has reignited the debate over the politicisation of the judiciary and comes as investigations continue into allegations of corruption involving Sánchez’s wife and his brother. While the prime minister has dismissed those allegations as politically motivated smears, in June he ordered his right-hand man, Santos Cerdán, to resign as the socialist party’s organisational secretary after a supreme court judge found “firm evidence” of his possible involvement in taking kickbacks on public construction contracts.

The corruption investigations, which also involve the former transport minister José Luis Ábalos and one of his aides, are particularly damaging as Sánchez came to power promising to crack down on graft.

The prime minister has previously cast doubt on the independence of some members of the Spanish judiciary, claiming in an interview in September “there’s no doubt that there are judges doing politics and there are politicians trying to do justice”.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the PP, noted that the verdict was the first time an attorney general had been convicted, adding: “This anomaly will weigh on Sánchez for ever. He can only head off greater institutional embarrassment by apologising to the Spanish people for this crude political operation and showing his respect for the supreme court.”

Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right Vox party, went further, saying: “Sánchez will be the first prime minister in Spanish history to end up in prison,” and accusing him of overseeing “a mafia that does nothing but soil our institutions”.