Unanimity in the first vote of Congress so that the Supreme Court can investigate Casero

The Commission of the Statute of the Deputy approved yesterday a favorable opinion to the granting of the request requested by the Supreme Court to investigate the extremeño deputy of the PP Alberto Casero for alleged embezzlement and prevarication.

The lower house has agreed to take the matter to the plenary session of Congress, where it is expected to be put to a vote on October 6.

As reported to Europa Press parliamentary sources, the request has gone ahead unanimously from all the groups present in this commission, which always meets behind closed doors.

The PSOE was not present at the meeting, since its only representative in this commission, Adriana Lastra, who is the president, is on leave due to a high-risk pregnant woman. The representative of Ciudadanos, Miguel Gutiérrez, has not attended either.

Casero does not present allegations

The commission had given Casero until Monday to present his allegations, but the ‘popular’ deputy, to whom the Supreme Court blames evidence of crime for contracts signed when he was mayor of Trujillo (Cáceres), has refused to provide his version.

According to the Regulations of the Congress, the Commission of the Statute of the Deputy has a maximum of 30 business days to submit a proposal to the Plenary of the Chamber, but the decision of the affected party not to present allegations has allowed the process to be accelerated.

Thus, the forecast is that the plenary session of Congress will definitively approve the granting of the request on October 6, thus giving free rein to the Supreme Court to investigate Casero.

Specifically, the magistrate Andrés Palomo wants the request to proceed criminally against the PP deputy when he sees rational indications of alleged crimes of prevarication and embezzlement, for certain agreements and service contracts that he made as mayor.

The Extremaduran deputy, a close collaborator of the former general secretary of the PP Teodoro García Egea who made headlines for his mistake that allowed the labor reform to be approved, was precisely the representative of the PP in the commission that studies the petitions until he was relieved in the changes introduced in the Popular Group after the arrival of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in Genoa. Now the spokesperson is in the hands of Ángel Luis González.

Behind closed doors

The debate and vote on the petitions, both in the Commission of the Statute of the Deputy and in the Plenary Session of Congress, takes place behind closed doors and without transparency. Deputies are also not obliged to follow voting instructions since their vote is secret. Only the result is disclosed.

Within eight days, counted from the agreement of the plenary session of the Chamber on the granting or denial of the requested authorization, Batet will transfer it to the judicial authority, advising it of the obligation to communicate to the Chamber the orders and sentences that are issued and personally affect the deputy.

The request shall be deemed denied if the Chamber has not ruled within sixty calendar days, computed during the session period, from the day following receipt of the request.

So far, Congress has approved 32 supplications and has rejected 14 (two of them about the same deputy). The last refusal of the Congress dates from 1988 and refers to a dispute over the right to honor that had as protagonist the former socialist minister José Barrionuevo and the brother of an ETA member (the now repentant Soares Gamboa) for including his photos on Interior posters.

32 requests granted

The last one that went ahead was the plea from the spokesperson for Junts, Laura Borràs, in June 2020, giving the green light to the Supreme Court to be investigated for crimes of fraud against the Administration, embezzlement of public funds and false documentation in its stage. director of the Institution of Catalan Letters (ILC).

In a secret vote, the request went ahead with 293 yeses from deputies from the PSOE, PP, Vox, United We Can and Citizens; against the 14 that add Junts and the PNV and five abstentions were also registered.

In previous legislatures, three PP deputies were authorized to be tried -Vicente Ferrer, Arsenio Pacheco and Nacho Uriarte- who had tested positive at the wheel and the previous one was the one who gave free rein to investigate the also ‘popular’ Jesús Merino for the ‘case Gurtel’. That of the former socialist counselor José Antonio Viera, investigated by the ERE, did not complete the process due to the resignation of the affected party.

In addition, among those granted, those of the former socialist minister José Barrionuevo stand out for the ‘GAL case’ or those of the deputies of Herri Batasuna Jon Idígoras, Francisco Letamendía and Antxón Ibarguren for the incidents that occurred in 1981 in the Guernica Assembly House, where Several members of that coalition staged protests in an act presided over by the Kings.