The investigation into the case of Punic, the larger pattern of corruption in the Community of Madrid, which has over a hundred defendants and 16 separate pieces, already has an expiration date: march 30, 2022. The judge of the Audiencia Nacional Manuel García-Castellón, set last Friday to a maximum term extraordinary 40 months to finish the instruction of a summary that was opened almost eight years before, in June of 2014 and initially focused on the exconsejero madrid Francisco Granados and entrepreneur David Marjaliza. Exhausted this term Punic is placed between the investigations more long-term, how many are in the National court, surpassed only by the case Gürtel, which started in 2008, and some of whose pieces are still in the research phase.
The holder of the Court of Instruction number 6 of the National appellate court has accepted the petition of the anti-Corruption Office and has agreed to an extension to an exceptional period of instruction maximum of 36 months (18 initial and 18 of ordinary extension) that provides for complex causes, the article 324 of the Criminal procedure Act. The magistrate stated that it faced a “cause, that could well be described as extraordinarily complex and exceptional” and that exceeds “exceeds” the requirements set by the procedural law to extend the period of investigation.
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The prosecutors of the ‘Punic’ ask for more time to close the investigation, The Supreme archive of the open case Gencobahis against the senator Barreiro for the plot Punic
The public prosecutor had requested an extension of the term of research is even greater: for five years, because that research, which depends to a great part of that countries generally uncooperative with the Spanish justice, to meet the requests for documentation made by the court. The public prosecutor also took into account the difficulties to expunge the documentation of a personal nature not necessary for the cause and the problems of the computer platform in which to save the summary.
The judge agrees with the prosecution that “there still remain important lines of research” for the elucidation of one of the frames of the macro record, and that they are “require time and research efforts”. However, see “excessive” the time requested by the prosecution, and limits you to 40 months, as he believes it has already “crossed the equator” of the research. “While it is true that we are before a cause extraordinarily complex, with an entity without precedent, the high involved and investigated and with a volume of documentary and procedural enormous, and should be avoided, at all times, a delay in the processing of the instruction that could result in mitigation or reduction of penalties to eventual convicted,” says García-Castellón.
