The final account of the prosecutor Pilar Santos has opened this Friday the fifth and last session of the trial of the master case . His words have followed one another like a gavel against the defense of Cristina Cifuentes, former president of the Community of Madrid, who sits on the bench accused of inducing the falsification of the minutes of her final master’s thesis (TFM) at the Rey Juan University Carlos (URJC). “Nothing of what she has stated has been able to be credited.”
“There are irregularities that are notorious.” “Due to his position, he did not stain his hands,” he stressed, forcefully, while he was reeling off the evidence that, according to him, proves the participation of the former leader of the PP in the commission of the crime. She asks the court to sentence her to three years and three months in prison.
Under the watchful eye of Cifuentes, who has observed the allegation of the public prosecutor from the bench, the prosecutor Santos has first recalled all the “facilities” that were granted to the former president of Madrid during the 2011-2012 academic year. He never went to class. He had no contact with any professor.
He passed the subjects with some supposed works that he always handed over to the late Enrique Álvarez Conde, the professor in charge of the master’s degree and supposed “brain” of the plot. She always communicated with him by phone, leaving no trace in the email.
“Too many irregularities that always benefited them”, has affected the prosecutor. “And this happened only with the students he captured”, given the need he had to get students to continue teaching the degree. Further,
This context is essential to reach the key conclusion of the public ministry. Because, once the scandal broke on March 21, 2018, Cifuentes needed to justify that he had done the master’s degree. “She knew that the consequences could be dire.” And then, the record was allegedly prompted.
“The only, first and last beneficiary of that act was her and her political career. And, as soon as he had that record and his file, he proceeded to display it, ”the prosecutor stated, despite the fact that the popular had never defended the TFM before any court. “He used an official document that he knew did not correspond to reality and introduced it to legal traffic.
He directed it to thousands of citizens ”. “She said it herself in a video on Twitter: ‘Things are credited with papers, not with words.”
“The document was created due to the pressure exerted,” the public prosecutor continued, which then focused its attack on María Teresa Feito, the advisor of the Community of Madrid who attended the university when the scandal broke out, for whom it is also requested three years and three months in jail.
The Prosecutor’s Office considers it the nexus between Cifuentes and Cecilia Rosado , the teacher who confessed to the falsification of the certificate and whom Feito called with “insistence” on March 21, 2018, when the first information that splashed on the then regional president is published.
As Santos recalled, the advisor was not only in the “epicenter” of the management to try to solve the crisis and telephoned Rosado throughout the day, but the URJC leaders assumed that she was speaking on behalf of the Community of Madrid.
In addition, one of the witnesses, Andrés Martínez, vice-rector for Planning and Strategy, affirmed that she was the first to provide the date on which Cifuentes had supposedly defended the TFM: July 2, 2012. That day is precisely the that appears in the falsified document.
“And we understand that this date was given to Álvarez Conde or Rosado by someone from the Cifuentes environment,” stressed the public ministry, which has pointed out that, at that time, the leader of the PP was already a subdelegate of the Government in the Community of Madrid and, therefore,
“Feito’s version, [who says that he was at the university that day and contacted those involved by chance], does not hold up. The calls to Rosado were constant. The mere ringing of the phone was enough to remind Cecilia that this situation required an immediate solution.
The pressure is enough if it is subtle and constant. And even more, if whoever exercises it is in power and whoever suffers it does not have mechanisms to protect themselves, ”the prosecutor highlighted. “Nothing that was manifested by Feito is true.”
“Knowing that he had a privileged position, since he had one foot in the Community and the other in the URJC, he tried to fix the situation,” Santos said. “Cifuentes had an obvious interest in saving the situation. She and Feito were in control of the fact. But, due to his position, Cifuentes did not stain his hands, ”the prosecutor concluded.