The judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz has archived the separate piece of the 3% case in which CDC charges were being investigated for donations to the party with the alleged purpose of illegally financing said formation. The investigating magistrate considers that there is "no indication whatsoever that proves a mechanism for the outcropping of black money."
The dismissal order explains that the criminal proceedings were opened on April 21, 2020 in order to investigate the facts "consisting of cash donations verified by people close to the CDC of funds that could constitute acts of outcropping of money from crime, in order to illicitly finance the party".
Pedraz affirms that all the procedures that had been requested have been carried out, including the Civil Guard report in which the cash income operation linked to donations was analyzed. Specifically, it was examined whether a system had been devised based on the reversal in the form of cash of the donation made by those investigated as a form of compensation for the initial income, so that the cash held by the CDC and presumably by illegal origin, would pass to the legal economic circuit using the simulation of a donation, instead of being a contribution made voluntarily by the donor.
The judge indicates that those investigated declared that the donations responded to extraordinary contributions that were requested by the CDC in their capacity as militants and, in particular, in response to the public office or institutional responsibility that some of them held as a result of the problems of treasury that they were told was undergoing training in those years. "The explanation given, with the proceedings, has not been distorted," stresses the magistrate.
On the one hand, he explains, it cannot be affirmed that the donations made were intended to introduce into the economic traffic amounts from a previous crime. "There is no basis to affirm that the origin of the funds came from the Palau case plot, since there is no diligence to prove it," he warns.
For the magistrate, as pointed out by some of the defenses, the donations made to the CDC would be transparent, in the case of information that had already existed for years in the accounting provided to the Court of Accounts and that would be duly documented in accordance with the law on financing of the political parties.
On the other hand, he continues, the coincidence in time between the donations and the supposed income in their accounts would not serve as an indication either. The accounting information has been analyzed in duplicate: on the one hand the database intervened at the CDC headquarters by the Civil Guard (based on the Daily Book) and on the other hand the CDC accounting (based on the General Ledger), in where the same donation appeared on slightly different dates. "This duplication of accounting sources would cause confusion. It would be an error due to the duplication of accounting sources," the judge concludes.
In relation to the Civil Guard Report of last April analyzing the cash income operation linked to donations, according to Pedraz, "the truth is that no element is followed from it that supports the alleged facts" and is limited to carrying out a summary of the information that the different banking entities had provided without providing any data that justifies continuing with the investigation.
"With this, there is no indication that proves a mechanism for the emergence of black money that was apparently delivered prior to the making of donations by those investigated to the CDC political party, nor that the money that could have been delivered to the militants had an illegal origin and even if it were, the investigated ones had knowledge that the money handed over had an alleged origin in a previous criminal act," concludes Pedraz.
Last January, the judge did decide to go ahead with another branch of the 3% case and agreed to open an oral trial to 17 investigated in the so-called piece of Infrastructures.
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