Public prosecutors in Madrid have opposed the interim suspension of Andorra's attempt to investigate former Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, over his involvement in the alleged "dirty war" against Catalonia which bankrupted an Andorran bank, the Banca Privada d'Andorra. The prosecution service has thus given its approval to the judicial assistance to Andorra known technically as 'letters rogatory', following the decision by the Madrid High Court (TSJM) in response to an appeal by Rajoy's lawyers, to paralyze the assistance to Andorra until both the public prosecutors and the Spanish government's solicitors had given their views on the case - before a deadline which expires on Thursday at 2pm. The views of the Spanish state solicitors are still to arrive.
According to the prosecutors, the argument presented by Rajoy for the provisional suspension "in reality" covers up a judgment made by Madrid investigative court number 32 and the section of the Madrid Audience - which have already refused to provisionally suspend the execution of the letters rogatory via a penal route. The prosecutors also stress that the "questioning" through the action of the General Directorate for International Legal Cooperation to give effect to Andorra's rogatory letters "would in its case be an examination of ordinary legality" which does not violate the right to equality.
Rajoy's argument
The defence alleges that the former Spanish PM has had his rights violated because the court, when it approved the aforementioned rogatory letters, did not carry out the "prior check on legality in accordance with national and conventional legislation on international cooperation". The Madrid Audience court decided in his favour in considering that the court should have considered the appeals against the Andorran letters rogatory, but it specified that it could not admit the appeals because the judge had already acted and given a response to the Principality. Thus, it endorsed the judicial assistance provided to the Andorran authorities.
The opinion of the public prosecutor's office arrives two days after the Madrid High Court paralyzed on an urgent interim basis - that is, without hearing the opinions of the parties in the case - the approval of the letters rogatory at the request of Rajoy and his former interior minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz. Once it has received reports from both the prosecutors and state solicitors, the court will decide whether to maintain the suspension. The Andorran judicial investigation is the result of the complaint filed by the Andorran Institute of Human Rights and the former president of Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) against Rajoy and other figures in his People's Party government, who are alleged to have used extortion against the BPA in an attempt to obtain information on bank accounts belonging to Catalan pro-independence politicians in 2015, during the independence process.