The President of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, ordered this Monday that his party on 19 the reform of the party headquarters on Génova street in Madrid in 2007. In this appeal, the PP asked for the acquittal of its former treasurer Luis Bárcenas as necessary step in order to also be able to apply for that of the party itself, which has been convicted as subsidiary civil liability. The current popular leadership claims that it was unaware of the conditions of this resource – which it attributes to the previous leadership, that of Pablo Casado – and that it does not agree with them, which is why it will withdraw it. “We didn’t know him and since we know him, we don’t share him,” said Deputy Secretary for Institutional Policy, Esteban González Pons, at a press conference on Génova Street.
The Dome of the Feijóo PP assures that they learned of the existence of the resource by reading this morning’s press; and while he understands why he came forward, he believes it cannot be explained politically. “The national leadership learned today through the media that an appeal by the party’s lawyers calls for the acquittal of Bárcenas,” González Pons said after the People’s Leadership Committee meeting. “This resource was written in the month of November and as far as we know it was presented ad cautelam three days before the National Congress [del PP, celebrado el 1 y 2 de abril]. We understand that this falls within the logic of defending the party’s honor as we are sure that the PP is innocent and wrongly convicted. But in this case, legal strategy collides with political logic. And when legal strategy cannot be explained politically, this leadership thinks that politics should prevail over legal strategy. As a result, management has decided today to retire this resource,” he explained.
mess of data
However, González Pons’ version of the data does not match that contained in the letter itself. PP lawyer Jesús Santos dated and signed the appeal on April 19, 17 days after Feijóo was elected party leader at the PP Congress. On April 20, it was signed by his attorney. Management sources, when pointed out to this extreme, later insisted that Feijóo’s team was unaware of the terms of that letter, and they acknowledge it is “a problem” that they had to deal with the lawyer because they would have need to know him.
The appeal presented by the PP calls for the acquittal of its former chief financial officer in order to avoid the founding penalty: payment of 123,669 euros as subsidiary civil liability for the payment of more than one million euros to the Unifica company “other than from accounting and official accounting”. Funds “not declared to Treasury”. It is therefore a question of seeking an acquittal in a cascade, because if Bárcenas’ conviction is overturned, the PP’s will also reject it.
The problem is that this forces Bárcenas to defend himself, as the PP’s lawyer does in a 46-page brief, despite being a person who embodies the black hole of corruption in the PP and whom the party has its back on swept a long time ago. On appeal, the PP attorney lays open his arguments in favor of the formation’s former treasurer and former manager for nearly two decades and repeatedly calls for his acquittal.
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The moment of the announcement of the appeal could not be more counterproductive for the PP, a week before the elections in Andalusia, in which their candidate Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla is aiming for a large majority. Feijóo acted quickly, announcing that the appeal would be withdrawn to prevent the matter from weighing on his election expectations.
Since taking office, Feijóo has tried to distance himself from the corruption baggage that the PP is still dragging to court. However, the leader of the people decided not to sell the seat in Genoa, as Pablo Casado announced at the time (although he never did it), in order to symbolize the break with the previous stage. She has also avoided condemning the behavior revealed in the audios released by EL PAÍS, which shows that the party maneuvered to prevent Bárcenas’ papers from coming to light.