Eva Rodríguez
At the at the beginning of March Eldiario.es published some information that sowed the case in Madrid's politics. The partner of the president of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, had allegedly received commissions for the purchase and sale of masks during the worst of the Pandemic. Throughout the days and weeks the exclusives continued. From tax fraud to the existence of a first floor (a luxury penthouse) in the same building. After the publication of this information, the newspaper was threatened by Isabel Díaz Ayuso's chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, in a conversation by whatsapp with journalist Ester Palomera, in which Rodríguez wrote "we are going to crush you, you are going to have to close".
The President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, with her partner, Alberto González Amador, in 2023. Lagencia Press
José Precedo, deputy director of Eldiario.es, was one of the members of the team that signed the investigation. He has worked in investigative journalism since the beginnings of his career, when he discovered that the mayor of Santiago was drefauding the tresury.
How do you work on investigative cases? Do you have something fixed?
We are always investigating and trying to bring out stories. What we do have from past experience are more or less clear guidelines of what we need at any given moment.
So, issues related to politics, we always have a political agent, a court agent and an economic agent who is skilled or has a good command of the commercial register databases, who knows how to search the land registry, in this case because there is a house, who can look for links to companies or company shareholders to find out what is behind what someone can tell you. In this case, we have taken the complaint from the public prosecutor's office once it reached the court and the Treasury report, but not everything is included in these reports. In other words, these reports give you a lot of information, but above all they give you many clues to look for other links. For example, in this case, the links between the Quiron Salud group, which is one of the main contractors of the Community of Madrid, and Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner.
"A report gives you information, but above all they give you clues to look for other links"
This does not appear in the document you are given, so you have to look at the databases in the commercial register to see if there are any positions in companies that coincide. We go to the land registry to see whose name is on the flat they live in and when we go to the street we also go and ask around the area to see if they live in one flat or two. We have suspicions and more than suspicions that they lived in two flats and so we go to the land registry to find out whose name is on the top floor. And when we realise that the flat upstairs is in the name of a company whose administrator is the same person who represents Ayuso's boyfriend, in this case, her lawyer, we have one more clue.
But that, if we don't have a team made up of people who are more or less experts in the courts, people who are used to dealing with political information and the PP, people who are used to searching databases, going to the commercial register to ask for notes, that's how we end up setting up an investigation. Otherwise, in the end we would just publish the paper and that's it.
So, in this specific case and as there have been others, in the case of Cifuentes as well, we created a team with experts from different areas, we work in a network with a Telegram group created just for this investigation, where more or less everyone contributes. And then we put things in common, in meetings, etc. But the fundamental thing is that there are experts in all these areas, that we are connected all the time through a group, in this case Telegram, but it could be any other messaging network, and then when we come to conclusions we meet physically, we share out to write, we look at threads to continue pulling, and that's how we have been able to do it.
From some papers we've had, we've been publishing for two weeks. Everything is in the papers, because here is the criticism that there is no such thing as investigative journalism, this is just leaks. Well, if you get a paper, you can publish the paper, or you can publish the paper and look for a lot of other data that may be related, that are not visible to the naked eye, and for that you need research.
"you (can) publish the paper and look for a lot of other data that may be related, that are not visible to the naked eye, and for that you need research."
I understand that it will take you a long time, but how do you decide what to release at what time?
We had a complaint to the Public Prosecutor's Office and a report from the Treasury, from there we decided, before the first meeting, which issues, which deliveries we were going to give at the beginning. In other words, Monday morning this, Monday night this, Tuesday this, Tuesday this.
And then it also has a lot to do with the reaction of the other party. As they react, they give us clues about things to look at. For example, they say, the flat is not mine, well, let's see whose flat it is. In other words, let's say that you don't have the paper, you start looking at it for a few days and you make deliveries, you make 20 deliveries, but you prepare 3 or 4 deliveries and then, as it is already a team working in a network, as the explanations come out from the other side, we look for more stories. Let's say we have 3 or 4 planned and from there, also depending on what we get back.
"It has to do with the reaction of the other party. As they react, they give us clues about things to look at."
And do you think that being independent means you can investigate whatever you want and in a freer way?
Yes, of course, that's the basis. In other words, if this media depended on the institutional advertising provided by the Community of Madrid, then the Community of Madrid would threaten to take away our institutional advertising and there would probably be some boss who would say, if they take away our institutional advertising I can't pay, we can't give these stories. It is essential to have economic independence because, first of all, and this is based on the assumption that you are going to do everything well and that you are not going to screw up and so on. Then, in addition, you have to be very professional because, in fact, if you make a mistake and they file a complaint and condemn you and demand compensation, this is an additional problem. But without reaching that point, in other words, by doing things well, you need economic independence to withstand the pressures because there are pressures. And I understand that the Community of Madrid will not have liked this, well, not the Community, its President will not have liked this at all and will try to tighten the screws on us as much as possible and take institutional publicity away from us.
"You need economic independence to withstand the pressures, because there are pressures."
They already distribute it according to quite debatable criteria, but they are trying to put even more pressure on us. So, having a network of 82,000 members who support us right now, paying a fee every month, gives you an independence that does not exempt you from working well because it doesn't matter if you have 82,000 members and they condemn you and you have to pay compensation to the injured party. It is money that you lose, but from the outset it helps you to tell the Community of Madrid that I won't back down if you threaten me because I don't depend on you to live.
How do you get people not to believe what they are saying and believe you when at the same time they have a very high level of power?
Well, with data. Generally that can only be achieved with data. A politician can go out there and say a lot of opinions that when you then present the data there is not much more.
It is true that the media also have a crisis of credibility and that with the publication of fake news, with disinformation campaigns, we are all a bit under suspicion, but in this case, for example, the president of the community comes out and says this is a campaign against my partner, they are coming after my boyfriend, it is the Treasury that owes 600,000 euros to my boyfriend, I don't know what. The next day we publish the email in which her partner acknowledges the crimes. You can say goodbye, the email is there.
"The media also have a crisis of credibility"
Two weeks go by and the court files a complaint, that is, it opens an investigation after the complaint to the public prosecutor's office for two offences of tax fraud and one of false documentation. Well, everyone knows that this is not the typical discussion you have with the tax authorities about whether you have to pay 21.5 or 19.8. They don't open an investigation for two offences of tax fraud if you don't exceed a fraud of 120,000 euros per year and they don't open an investigation for false documentation if you don't present false invoices.
It is not true that this is a typical argument with the tax authorities about how much tax you have to pay. It is that you have tried to defraud the Treasury with a scheme of false invoices and front companies, you have been caught and you have been denounced. Well, that's presenting the data and letting politicians give their opinions, but the fact is that opinions fall down in the face of data.
And then there will always be absolute defenders of Ayuso or any other party who won't believe anything you publish, but you can't do anything about that.
Were you surprised that no action is being taken against Ayuso? Did you expect a different reaction?
Well, not much, since it has been accepted without much problem, not only by the PP militants, but also by the average voter in Madrid, that Ayuso gives a contract, in the worst of the pandemic, to a company owned by a friend of his people to bring masks and that this friend of his people pays 200,000 euros in commission to his brother and nothing happens and there is no reproach because people say, that is legal.
It is legal for one reason only, because we were in the middle of the pandemic, because we had lifted the controls because adding bureaucracy to that crisis meant that more people would die, so we all established a pact of trust in which the controls were going to be lifted to get the masks as soon as possible to save people. That's why it's legal, if we were now it wouldn't be legal to give that kind of contract like that. It is legal because we had all made a pact of trust because there was an urgency to save people.
If you betray that pact of trust by taking 230,000 euros from a contract with your sister, even if it is legal because at that moment we lifted the controls, it doesn't seem very ethical. That, because the voters, I'm not saying that alone, but since then there have been elections and Ayuso has increased his support. Well, everyone will have their own reasons for voting.
There are people who say that the other candidates were worse. Well, everyone will have their own opinion. But it doesn't surprise me, Ayuso has very strong support from the right-wing media because she also gives out a lot of money in advertising and aid.
When she confronted the leader of the PP, the right-wing media supported her against the leader of the PP and it is clear to me that this is because Pablo Casado was at the head of a party and she was at the head of an institution. The institution has a public budget, money for advertising, and that influenced the right-wing media to side mostly with Ayuso. So no surprise there.
They are ready to defend almost anything. As I insist, there is a question that Casado asked himself before he was killed and it is true that Casado was not exactly fighting corruption either. There was a power struggle there and many things got mixed up. But Casado asked a question on the COPE channel on Friday before he was killed, which was whether it was acceptable that when 700 people were dying every day during the pandemic, your brother could be receiving a commission of 230,000 euros for a contract that you had given him. Well, I think that question is very pertinent and that very few politicians could stand such a case. Ayuso is a special case, she is the hope of the right, or at least of a large part of the right. She has a media that is very devoted to her, either because they believe she is the best or because they believe they need her institutional publicity and aid, and she has come out of this and I believe she will also come out of this now. This does not mean anything either, because we are not here to get rid of politicians. We are here to make the facts clear to society and then society can make decisions.
It is society's responsibility, not the media's, to make decisions based on the information we give it. What we do is that people are informed. What do people then do with that information? It is the responsibility of the people, it cannot be the responsibility of the media.
Are you worried or are you already seeing that the sources you had before could be compromised? (…) Both Ayuso's and the PP.
We used to go to lunch with Ayuso because we didn't have much, but we tried to maintain a relationship with journalist sources. Ayuso didn't tell us much either. She didn't like us very much before.
It's true that something happens now that during these weeks they don't even answer the most basic questions. We ask questions, questions that in theory an administration or a government is obliged to answer because they are of public interest, and they ignore you, they don't answer you. Well, let alone when they insult you like they did to us or threaten us or tell us that we are going to Ayuso's house hooded, which is enough to put someone in a psychiatric hospital.
But yes, of course that will affect us. But in the end, what do you do? Don't you give them a piece of news like this to make them like you better and eat with them? No, you don't. And this happens not only with the PP, it happens with politicians of all colours.
When you bring out information they don't like, they get on their guard because I don't know why politicians think we are here to fan them or to pamper them. It always happens but it's part of our job. When we publish things that bother them they treat us worse.
You have a left-wing editorial line, but there is a part of the left that criticises you a lot. Does that affect you when it comes to losing members or the same as with Ayuso, to have information?
It's true that the right-wing press in this country, above all in Madrid, is quite tremendous in many things. But if we go back to what should be, to the theoretical level, a journalist is a journalist and a politician is a politician. And then politicians of all colours, that's how it is, end up wanting you to be their publicist and when you're not, they accuse you of a lot of things.
Well, I don't think we have to be publicists for any politician. And then CanalRED is a media outlet owned by a former politician who is looking for the possibility of becoming a partner and so on, and that's where all kinds of tactics come into play. And if you say that ElDiario.es belongs to Yolanda Díaz or the PSOE or I don't know who, it's easier for you to stay with the people who identify more with Podemos. I mean, these are also strategies of competing media. I think that if all the politicians say that you're from the other side, then you're not doing so badly.
"I think that if all the politicians say that you're from the other side, then you're not doing so badly."
I think it would be worse if they said that this one is one of ours, this one knows how to do information well because he's always putting us in a good light. Well, that's a problem. Politicians and journalists are different things, it's good that we are different things. I'm not saying that some are better and others are worse, each one does their job but they have to realise that we're not here to fan them. Not Ayuso, not Pablo Iglesias, not Yolanda Díaz, not Pedro Sánchez, not anyone.
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