Juan Carlos Monedero takes part in a Podemos rally in 2021, with Pablo Iglesias VÍCTOR SAINZ sitting next to him
The last remaining line of investigation in the Neurona case — the court investigation that began in mid-2020 to probe Podemos’ relationship with Mexican consulting firm Neurona — is draining a bit more. The Cybercrime Unit of the National Police has concluded that Juan Carlos Monedero, founder of the party, did not tamper with an email he sent to the Latin American company that put judges Juan José Escalonilla under suspicion. Education gives this police report tremendous value as it shows, according to political power, that Monedero did not step in as a commission agent to get Neurona hired for the April 2019 general election. So we can once again fill up on oxygen, something that has become weaker and weaker in these more than two years.
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“Because it is a third-party web portal, like Google-gmail in this case, the user (the owner of the email account) does not have the option to modify an email that has already been sent. It may not be deleted, changed or manipulated; as all this data is stored on Google-managed servers that users do not have access to modify, except to be able to send or receive emails from this web platform,” the Cybercrime Unit reveals in a two-page report dated April 2. February. to which EL PAÍS had access.
The Neurona case was born as a macro process that was deflated. After receiving a complaint from a former party lawyer – José Manuel Calvente, at odds with the leadership – Judge Escalonilla opened up to 10 lines of investigation, nine of which he has already shelved. Among other things, it was ruled out that bonuses were paid to the manager and treasurer of Podemos; that the cost of the headquarters’ work would be inflated; or that monies be diverted from the Foundation Solidarity Fund, a fund to which the protégés donate part of their salary for social purposes and which assigns the right indicated as box b. The nanny case was also archived, the outcome of investigations which focused on an alleged crime of unfair administration in which Podemos employees were allegedly used to look after the daughter of current Minister for Equality Irene Montero and former Vice President to take care of government and former party leader Pablo Iglesias.
As of today, only one strand of the investigation remains open: the employment of Neurona by Podemos for the general elections in April 2019. The judge initially suspected that the formation paid the consultant 363,000 euros for some services that were never awarded Having demonstrated the work of the Latin American company, he turned the investigation around and is now investigating whether the price paid to Neurona was excessive. For this he has commissioned an appraisal to calculate the costs, although he cannot find anyone to do it: a dozen companies and professionals have already refused to take on this task.
In this context, the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police came to prepare a report in November 2020 in which it pointed directly to Monedero and the judge indicted him. According to the judge, who thus collected the agents’ thesis, the founder of Podemos had allegedly received 26,200.31 euros for mediation in favor of Neurona so that the party would hire them for the national elections in April 2019. To support his theory, the UDEF assured that to justify these revenues, the politician presented an ad hoc bill of 26,200 euros dated December 30, 2018 under the concept “300 hours of personal consultation in Buenos Aires, Colombia and Mexico”. have. “[Es] It is common practice to issue false invoices under the purported provision of consulting services as it is a service that is difficult to verify,” the judge added in a letter.
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However, Monedero and Podemos have denied any illegality from the start. The party’s co-founder has always admitted he worked for Neurona years ago, but insists he had nothing to do with hiring the Mexican company for the general election. He also stated in his defense that this invoice was sent to the consultant by email on January 13, 2019, i.e. before it was called (the email which, as the Cybercrime Unit has now determined, cannot be manipulated). became. those April 2019 elections. “Thus, the insinuations about the alleged connection between the payment he received and the subsequent elections are unfounded,” say political power sources.
Similarly, the person in charge of this campaign, Juan Manuel del Olmo, assured the judge that it was he who, on his own initiative, decided to entrust Neurona with the work for these elections, after the person in charge of the consulting firm had contacted him months before and after the elections in February 2019.
Judge Escalonilla ruled on July 27 to end the investigative period in Neurona’s case, but has not yet decided whether to file the case or prosecute anyone – he is awaiting receipt of this expert report on the costs of Neurona’s work -. For their part, prosecutors believe that these investigations have little future. Not only does the prosecutor already acknowledge that the consultant sent staff to Spain to help with the campaign and that he carried out work on behalf of Podemos, but in a letter to the trainer they note: “We understand that training may decline with those providers deemed appropriate and costs may not be reliably determined.”
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