Defence lawyer Gonzalo Boye, key figure in several major Spanish cases related to politics, has responded to his prosecution for alleged money laundering with a statement that not only reiterates the evidence against the accusations, but also strongly denounces the lack of impartiality of the judge in charge of the investigation, Maria Tardón. The lawyer's defence team has filed an appeal, calling for the dismissal of the case, which accuses the judge of "manifest enmity" and notes Tardón's links with Spain's Popular Party (PP), relevant due to Boye's participation in several cases related to the Gürtel affair - major corruption case centred on the PP - as well as his defence of Carles Puigdemont and other Catalan pro-independence politicians.
The case against Boye has its origins in the confiscation by the authorities of one million euros at Barajas airport in 2017 from another of the defendants, Manuel González Rubio. Tardón links this money to drug trafficking, claims that it belonged to José Ramón Prado, alias Sito Miñanco, and accuses Boye of interfering in the creation of false contracts to try and recover the funds.
Boye's denial
The lawyer denies the allegations involved in the case and refutes the evidence against him with documentary evidence of the same investigation, using recorded conversations - some of which had not been transcribed in the investigation summary - as well as with the geolocators of the phones used by the defendants, which show that the meetings Boye was supposed to have attended could not have taken place, among other reasons, because their protagonists were at that time in different countries.
The lawyer's defence team denounces that there has been no response to the submission that they presented dismantling this evidence and that the accusation that Boye drew up contracts has been maintained despite the fact that police searches of his house and his office found no documentary evidence to support it.
The defence document asserts that judge Tardón is responsible for all this. The lawyer's defence asserts that the right to an impartial judge predetermined by law has been violated because his case continues to be conducted in the National Audience court, which is not competent to investigate alleged offences of money laundering, despite having been separated from the main trial in the case. "What is at stake here, in essence, is the right to a legal process with due guarantees," warns Boye's submission.
Putting him in the dock
The document repeatedly asserts the lack of impartiality of judge Tardón, who in the space of two years has pursued two different court actions against Boye, “both of them for alleged and non-existent falsifications, and both reflecting a clear interest in putting him in the dock”. This is after 19 years of practicing in the profession in which he had not had a single accusation of even irregular action, and now "suddenly" he has two different prosecutions for alleged falsifications and in both cases the same investigating judge.
In arguing the judge's interest, the document recalls the past political role of judge Tardón in the PP, and her appointment as a candidate to be part of the Spanish judiciary's highest body, the General Council of the Judiciary, at the request of the PP, in addition to emphasizing that Boye is prosecuting different cases which are part of the Gürtel affair.
"This more than close relationship between the investigating judge and this political party has a clear effect on, at least, the appearance of impartiality," warns the text, also asserting that only this apparent lack of impartiality could explain the decisions and imputations made against Boye in these proceedings. "Unsustainable allegations which lack any rational evidence of a crime and, in addition, are contrary to the slightest and most basic logic as well as the objective evidence that appears in the actions that discredit the whole incriminating narrative," affirms Boye's defence document.
"Manifest enmity"
The text, which warns that issues of personal connections should have led Tardón to step aside in the first case she presented against Boye, denounces that "the lack of impartiality runs through the entire procedure" against the lawyer to the point of asserting a "manifest enmity" of the Spanish judge.
Among the reasons that might have led to this hostility are, as well, the fact that Boye leads the defence cases of the Catalan president in exile Carles Puigdemont and other pro-independence politicians. "Nothing is more appealing, from a certain political position, than to damage the legal defence of people who, from this same political position [that of the PP], have been defined as public enemies and who are none other than Mr Puigdemont and the members of his government, who are defended by the lawyer Mr Boye, who, at the same time, is making accusations against the PP to which the investigating judge is closely linked", says the statement.
Violation of rights
The appeal alleges "violation of the rights to the presumption of innocence, to the right to an impartial judge, to the right of defence by omission of the rational indications of criminality on which the prosecution interlocutory is based; and the lack of any evidence for the alleged actions which are the subject of the case, as demonstrated by expert evidence from the mobile phones involved."
"Absolutely everything stated by the defendants Manuel Andrés Puentes Saavedra and Manuel González Rubio was objectively denied in the documentation provided in the brief submitted on January 21st, 2021," recalls the text as well as emphasizing that much of the material that proves its claims appears in the summary itself.
Evidence not transcribed
The appeal says that the court was able to check the transcripts of the conversations provided by Boye that are listed in the summary but that had been excluded from the court's summary. "The most surprising thing is that these conversations were included in the evidence, not transcribed by investigating judge, and that they are conversations in which not only what is said matters, but also what is not said," notes the document, referring to the fact that at no time does González Rubio say that the money involved is not his but belongs to a third party, and nor does he indicate that that party was Prado. "This is extremely important and it is absent from the entire proceedings. It's unheard of," says Boye's document.
Finally, the submission concludes that there is no punishable action involved, and that Boye's activity is limited to actions that are professionally appropriate. "Trying to criminalize the work of a lawyer, depending on who he is defending or what cases he is conducting, is a direct attack on the right to a legal defence, so precious to any democratic society and to the rule of law," argues the statement.
The accusations against the lawyer are based on statements from two of the defendants in the case, González Rubio himself, who asserted that all responsibility for the case belongs to the lawyer, and Manuel Puentes Saavedra, who, after having spent a year and seven months in prison, was released on probation after incriminating Boye.
In the main image, Gonzálo Boye in an archive photo / Sergi Alcàzar