Madrid Judge Requests Supreme Court Inquiry into Europarliament Member for Leaked Conversations
A judge in Madrid has requested the Supreme Court (TS) to investigate Europarliament member Luis Alvise Pérez for allegedly disseminating intercepted conversations between a journalist and former Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martínez. This request, reported by Europa Press, comes from Judge Carmen Rodríguez-Medel, who aims to elevate a reasoned motion to the high court due to Pérez's status as a privileged figure in Spain's political landscape.
The Supreme Court already has three other criminal cases against Pérez. This latest case results from a complaint filed by the journalist involved in the conversations, which took place between 2013 and 2016. These discussions were intercepted as part of the ongoing Kitchen Operation. Subsequently, amid the judicial investigation, certain conversations were uploaded to a cloud platform. In a turn of events, on July 10, 2023, Alvise Pérez allegedly leaked 23 complete chats that had been redacted by the central instruction judge via his broadcasting channel on the Telegram platform, according to the judge’s statement to the court.
The former second-in-command of the Interior Ministry claimed that the leaked chats, which had not yet been published by the press, included sensitive information concerning his underage children. The judge noted that the financial accounts receiving donations were linked to Pérez, suggesting that the publication of the chats incentivized contributions to those accounts—potentially indicating a profit motive.
The court maintains that these actions may constitute a crime of disclosure of secrets, likely implicating Pérez as responsible for the leaks. This decision arrives just nine days after the Supreme Court announced a new criminal case against him, this time related to messages he distributed through his Telegram account targeting Valencia's delegate prosecutor for hate crimes and discrimination, Susana Gisbert. The court believes Pérez may have acted with the intent to deliberately compromise the safety of the prosecutorial representative.
Earlier this year, in April, the high court agreed to charge Pérez for suspected illegal financing and for allegedly disseminating a false PCR test regarding the President of the Government of Catalonia, Salvador Illa. As the investigations continue, the implications for Pérez's political career and the wider ramifications for Spain's political transparency remain to be fully seen.
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