Former judge Manuel Penalva, who is on trial these weeks along with five other people for alleged irregularities in the investigation of the case against Bartolomé Cursach, Mallorca’s biggest nightclub businessman, resumed his work at the forefront of the investigation this Thursday and he has accused the two prosecutors who brought the trial of blowing up the trial and renounced key witnesses and reports corroborating the businessman’s alleged mafia maneuvers. All of the defendants, including Cursach, were acquitted after the charges were dropped. Penalva, for whom prosecutors are seeking more than a hundred years in prison for alleged crimes of disclosure of secrets, unlawful detention, obstruction of justice and judicial subterfuge, has named the lawyers and police officers who he says leaked much of the information, for which he now sits on the Supreme Court of the Balearic Islands. “Enough hypocrisy,” he cried.
The sessions resumed with the statements of the accused after the room had clarified the previous questions. The court issued an order Tuesday allowing the trial to proceed, but voided all evidence obtained through the cellphones of two police officers who were prosecuted for anything related to the leaks to the media. The defense claimed that all of this information was null and void as it had been obtained illegally as a result of the hacking into the mobile phones of two journalists, which was deemed illegal in two sentences and which, in their view, led to the following conclusion: The mobile phone of two agents of the Balearic National Police money laundering group seized. The court agreed to leave the rest of the information obtained on these cellphones to the judgment.
Manuel Penalva, this Thursday, during his testimony at the trial of investigators in the Cursach case. TSJ Balearic Islands
In the decision, the judges also declared certain tests illegal. Including the lists of irregularly received calls from journalists and their conversations with the police. From now on, they can no longer be used by the prosecution, although the court considered that the disclosure to the journalists who are accused in the trial can be proven by other lawful evidence. The judges refused to set aside the case because of the incompetence of the investigating police or the alleged partiality of the judge and prosecutor. The court has defined the role of private law enforcement agencies, which can only prosecute for acts that have directly harmed them.
Retired Judge Manuel Penalva’s statement began at 9 a.m. this Thursday. During his speech there were several moments of tension with the prosecutor Tomás Herranz, who was to question him in this case and who also presided over the prosecution in the trial of the Mallorcan businessman Bartolomé Cursach, in which he finally dropped all charges against the persecuted and asked the accused for forgiveness. Penalva has defended his role in leading the investigation into the Cursach case, the investigation into businessman Bartolomé Cursach. “I have not seen so many people in my entire career who were ruined and cried with impotence because they had gone to all the institutions and no one had visited them. Everyone has turned their backs on them, the only ones who started an investigation to uncover a corrupt conspiracy were us, we have never seen so many people cry over their lives being ruined,” Penalva said. The prosecutor accuses him of continuing to support this version, since all of the accused were acquitted in the trial after the prosecutor’s office withdrew all allegations. “He continues to claim that what didn’t happen happened and his face isn’t contorted with shame,” he accused.
Penalva has criticized the role of prosecutor Herranz and the head of the Balearic Anti-Corruption Agency, Juan Carrau, throughout the trial, which has already been charged in the Palma court. “I will explain the reason for the end of the Cursach case. There was a lawyer who said we talked a lot about the Cursach case here. And you know why, ladies and gentlemen, because nothing was discussed in the Cursach trial, nothing,” he said in court. And he continued: “Do you know why nothing was said? Because Mr. Carrau and Mr. Herranz, and I’m sorry to say it so rudely, are waiving 60 witnesses, waiving numerous police reports from the money laundering group, all of which relate to the irregularities that the Cursach machine has done as a result of its influence in the city council, allowed them, allowed them to get involved”. The former judge also mentioned Carrau multiple times, claiming that he was actively involved in the entire investigation of the Cursach case, while prosecutors defended that he was never formally assigned to the case. “I don’t know why Carrau isn’t sitting here. He attends a large number of statements, numerous negotiations and everything is discussed with him, he knew everything. Why isn’t he here because he’s not in the chat? I don’t know,” he said.
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media leaks
At various points in the statement, the person who was the chief instructor in the Cursach case was questioned about the alleged information leaks to the media. Penalva declined to delve into the matter after some of the prosecutor’s evidence was voided, but he wanted to stress that he was unable to examine many of them because they had never been brought to his attention. “There were leaks from day one, as is the case with all media issues. “It seems that we have discovered gunpowder, always have been and always will be,” he defended. Penalva has assured that he has “evidence” of the leaks in the ORA case – a separate part of the Cursach case investigating the alleged collection of bribes in exchange for the provision of regulated valet parking in Palma – for which he sits were carried out by three lawyers, one of whom was present in the room and whose names he named. “Enough hypocrisy,” he cried.
He has also brought charges against the two inspectors of the National Police of the Balearic Islands, who had drawn up numerous reports against him, accusing them of leaking “some false and non-existent” information and of having misled the investigating magistrate of the case before the Supreme Court of the Balearic Islands reassured him the case was secret, while the leaks now being tracked occurred “when that wasn’t the case”. Penalva has pointed to the impossibility of investigating judicial leaks where there are large numbers of suspect actors because investigations become prospective, and has also pointed to the workload of an investigation they worked on every day of the week. “I did this macro investigation and identified other causes. Are they going to tell me that I had to open 70 individual pieces to examine leaks?” he asked the court.
The prosecutor’s interrogation lasted almost five hours, during which he also questioned the investigation into the so-called ORA case, which led to the arrest of Palma City Council officials and PP Councilor Álvaro Gijón. Penalva emphasized that the witness testimony on which the case was based was credible and that awarding regulated valet parking to a particular businessman was “a scam like a cathedral.” At this point, he stressed that the arrests ordered were “police” arrests, including those of the councillor’s family, whom he said he did not know. “I didn’t know Mr. Gijón. I remember that Mr Gijón was involved in very shady affairs, that he was under investigation on the party issue, there were some…