An unseemly conflict

The National High Court is now heated with a contest to determine which judge is to investigate the case of the papers in which Luis Bárcenas noted deliveries of money from businessmen and handovers of funds to prominent persons in the Popular Party (PP), when he was its treasurer. Judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez considers himself empowered to investigate it; so does his colleague Pablo Ruz. The dispute between the two magistrates, with the prosecutor's office involved, may well prolong and complicate the investigation.

By now the Gürtel case investigation has accumulated more than 2,000 dossiers, including judicial requests issued to 18 countries, with 101 persons now implicated. This is the result of four years of work, begun in Section 5 of the National High Court. The case, after various vicissitudes, came back to the same court, and is now in the hands of Ruz.

A first inspection has brought to light several coincidences between the indictment and the Bárcenas papers published by EL PAÍS on January 31 and February 3 of this year. Ruz has now opened a separate dossier on these documents. We can only wish he had acted diligently and firmly on them from the beginning. He would thus have avoided the impression that it has been the involvement of Gómez Bermúdez, acting on a suit by the United Left, and the possibility that the case would pass into his hands, that has caused him, and the prosecutor's office, to react.

At this stage, Ruz is linking the content of the Bárcenas papers with the Gürtel case. Meanwhile, the prosecutor's office has brought in new links between the information sent by the PP to the Court of Accounts and the payments made to this party by the Gürtel ring. The prosecutor proposes an investigation to determine "what the final destination was, both of the payments made by the circle and organization of Francisco Correa," and of those proceeding from donors to the PP, and the connections between the two. The prosecutor's office does not understand what grounds Bermúdez has for ascribing to Ruz an intention of making a "general case" against the PP, nor why he assesses this judge's decision as being "contrary" to the laws.

It does not seem outlandish for the judge in charge of the principal investigation (Ruz) to be working on the connections with the Bárcenas papers. In any case, a higher power will have to resolve the dispute between the two judges, but it is desirable that both the court and the prosecutor treat the matter as a technical question: if there are formal doubts, they should be resolved by the body competent to do so, rather than prolong the unseemly spectacle of squabbling judges, and hasty moves by the prosecutor's office. The Criminal Section's veto against Bárcenas being summoned to give evidence before Gómez Bermúdez, and the prosecutor's appeal against the proceedings ordered by this judge, are striking in their air of hasty improvisation and their doubtful legal basis, when the conflict of powers has not yet been decided. So far the two judges can and must go on investigating, each one adopting the proceedings he considers pertinent.