The day the meeting between the prosecutor Ignacio Stampa and the former PSOE militant and councilor Leire Díez was made public, she sent him one last message to try to talk to him, without success. Stampa never responded and simply sent an email to his boss, the Madrid provincial prosecutor, to let her know that Díez, now under investigation for one corruption crime and another for influence peddling, had attempted to contact him again that August 11.
The investigation conducted by the head of Madrid’s investigative court number 9, Arturo Zamarriego, began this week to try to clarify whether the former PSOE militant conducted an alleged “criminal plan” with the aim of “discrediting” the management of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and thus managing to “cancel” cases that “affect politicians and businessmen”, as the public prosecutor believes.
The first to go to court were none other than two prosecutors and a commander of the armed institute, witnesses of the alleged blackmail carried out by Díez and the entrepreneur with whom he participated in many of his meetings, Javier Pérez-Dolset (under investigation at the National Court for fraud which he denies). Anti-corruption prosecutor José Grinda assured that a journalist gave him a document with the offer of a job abroad in exchange for the presentation of some cases and information on his boss Alejandro Luzón; Commander Rubén Villalba – currently suspended from duty and pay due to charges in The Koldo case− He recounted a meeting in which Díez offered him compensation for his defense and placed him in a position at the General Directorate of the Civil Guard in exchange for information from colleagues in uniform; and Prosecutor Stampa detailed another quote in which the offer was based on government help for his lawsuits against the administration to collect compensation for his sudden departure from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in exchange for the same, information about fellow prosecutors.
During his stay in court, Stampa handed over a series of documents, to the contents of which EL PAÍS had access, including, for example, several WhatsApp conversations revealing how that meeting with him on March 7 was organized and a notarial deed recording the existence of an audio recording of that conversation lasting a total of three hours and 19 minutes. “Serious meeting”, he defined the file he handed over to the judge.
The prosecutor also provided a series of internal emails from the Prosecutor’s Office showing that, following the publication in several media of information accusing Leire Díez of being responsible for “plumbing works in the PSOE”, he stopped communicating with the former socialist and reported some incidents to his superiors.
“I inform you that today at 6.30 am I received two WhatsApp messages on my cell phone,” he wrote in an email addressed to Madrid’s chief provincial prosecutor, Pilar Rodríguez. That August 11th it was published for the first time that Stampa had had a meeting with Leire Díez. She tried to contact him from a phone number that Stampa had not saved. “Hi, I’m Leire. I’m writing to let you know that I’ve changed my number,” she told him, detailing her new number. He also attached the link to the information about ABC which was headlined: “Leire Díez also asked the prosecutor Stampa for anti-corruption data”.
The official did not respond and simply sent the notice in the form of an email to his boss. “For the purposes deemed relevant,” he underlined. Stampa became one of the key witnesses in the case. Although the content of that authenticated recording is not yet known, this Wednesday in his statement he explained that both the former socialist militant and the entrepreneur Dolset made up to 12 references to the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, and assured that they had been instructed by the socialist party to “clean” what they considered the sewers of the judicial and police world. One of the messages also shows that the entrepreneur Luis del Rivero – former president of the Sacyr construction company and victim of the Villarejo case – told the public prosecutor that the meeting would take place with Dolset and with the former secretary of the PSOE Organization Santos Cerdán. This, however, never appeared, nor did he initiate any direct contact with Stampa, and he has always denied any type of close link with Díez. “With only one arm I don’t have much of a right hand,” he said last May, when an attempt was made to attribute closeness to the one now under investigation.
The list of witnesses from these meetings continues this Tuesday 11 November with the testimonies of Cerdán’s lawyer Jacobo Teijelo and several journalists who also met Díez. It will then be up to her, Dolset and the journalist investigated on November 17th.
