The former socialist deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo appeared on February 22 in the Tenerife court investigating the Mediator case. For an hour, he answered questions from the judge, the prosecutor and his lawyer. None of the three recognized any illegal activity. "I don't know," was his usual response to the most difficult questions, as reflected in the recording of the interrogation.
"Does he deny having benefited directly or indirectly from payments, from bribes in police slang, from different businessmen?" asks the judge. "Totally," responds the researcher.
"Photographs have been published that appear in the case of some parties that could have been paid for by businessmen as hidden commissions," continues the instructor. "I don't know," says Fuentes.
The magistrate's tone after hearing the former deputy's first responses reflects mistrust. «What interpretation can the instruction give to this? Is it another coincidence? », She comes to say in her towards the end of the interrogation, after hearing that the former deputy from the Canary Islands disassociated some alleged bribes from the efforts on a file that concerned a businessman. "His life of him is nourished by coincidences," the judge returns.
The instructor had exposed a sequence of dates that was striking to her: in March 2020, the businessman paid for the hotel and prostitutes and three days later the deputy agreed to review the problematic file. "Alberto [the businessman] pays," the intermediary Antonio Navarro Tacoronte tells him during his stay at the hotel. "Pass me the catalogue," replies the deputy, referring to a catalog of prostitutes from which he chooses. «The businessman takes out huge amounts of money on March 6, 8, 10, 13 and 26. But it is a coincidence. And the 'pass me from the catalog' must be an error in the transcription...», the judge ironically.
A part of the interrogation of judge María de los Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceres focuses on the relationship of the former deputy with the mediator. "Did he receive you in Congress?" "We ate once," concedes Fuentes, who later explains that sometimes a businessman wanted to visit Congress and was accompanied by Navarro. “There is a documented sequence of business visits together with Navarro Tacoronte. Is this walk of businessmen through the Congress of Deputies normal?” asks the instructor.
"Is it common for many businessmen to come to Congresses to present problems and try to solve them?" says the defendant. And again the distrust of the judge is revealed: "Her nephew of hers was the general director of Livestock, was the general direction that they had to go to Congress ineffective?" Fuentes Curbelo dismisses the question with a brief "I don't know."
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