The judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz, in charge of the Cloacas case, has once again required the PSOE to, within a maximum period of 15 days, "without further delay and without subjecting compliance to extra-procedural actions of its exclusive initiative", to provide the documentation requested on two occasions regarding the lawyers or professional law and consulting firms hired by the party between 2021 and 2025.
The magistrate thus responds to the letter in which the PSOE told him that the information he requested was affected by professional secrecy and that, in addition, the collection of data was laborious and he was now busy with the campaign.
The judge gives them 15 days and tells the party that it must identify "in a precise and individualized manner" the affected documents and the legal reasons that would justify their exclusion for the protection of professional secrecy.
In his resolution, the magistrate responds to the PSOE that its consultation with the General Council of Spanish Lawyers does not imply the suspension of its request for information. "No legal provision attributes to said unilateral initiative the potential to paralyze a judicial investigation procedure or to defer compliance with a final jurisdictional resolution. The party liable for the request cannot escape compliance by promoting extra-procedural actions of a corporate nature."
It explains that the resolution of October 6 expressly delimited the scope of the obligation to provide documentation, excluding information that could be affected by professional secrecy. "The issue whose clarification the representation of the PSOE claims to pursue was already the subject of consideration" by this instructor without it being necessary to artificially reopen a debate previously resolved in jurisdiction," says Pedraz.
"The PSOE's response does not identify specific documents or specific points with respect to which there is an effective violation of professional secrecy. On the contrary, it is limited to maintaining a generic and indiscriminate invocation regarding all of the required documentation," the order states.
This approach, he continues, "is incompatible" with jurisprudence. "The limit is, where appropriate, the unnecessary penetration into the material content of the attorney-client relationship: confidential communications, facts revealed to obtain advice, defense strategy, legal advice provided, confidential documents or information relating to other clients unrelated to the investigation," he points out.
That is to say, it does not reach what the judge had requested, which were the contracting documents and those that would allow verification that the lawyers were actually carrying out tasks for the party. Investigators suspect that the two lawyers accused in the case were the way for the party to channel funds to the plumber Leire Díez.
Pedraz emphasizes that it is his sole responsibility to direct the investigation and determine the scope of the proceedings. "It cannot be accepted that the recipient of a judicial requirement conditions its compliance with the prior consent of a professional corporation or on his own assessment of the relevance, proportionality or origin of the agreed measure. The agreed diligence is necessary to verify regulatory compliance and only if you understand that it incriminates you can you object," he concludes.
Regarding the allegation that the requested documents were dispersed throughout all the territorial organizations and that the party is involved in the pre-campaign, the judge says that they are "internal circumstances exclusively attributable to the requested party." "Such reasons cannot prevail over the constitutional duty to collaborate with the Administration of Justice or justify non-compliance with a judicial resolution."
