Sparks flew between Spanish newspaper ABC and the Public Prosecutor's Office after the newspaper published that Álvaro García Ortíz, new Prosecutor general, met last Wednesday with Banca Privada d'Andorra's (BPA) former president, Higini Cierco, in its front page. The newspaper linked the alleged meeting to the judicial inquiry opened in Andorra against Mariano Rajoy's government for extorting the BPA in the dubbed Operation Catalonia —to obtain information on the bank accounts belonging to the Pujol family, Artur Mas and Oriol Junqueras— which ended up leading to the bank's intervention in 2015. The Prosecutor's Office published a note in which it denies the news, calling them "totally false" and demands the newspaper publishes a correction on its front page.
ABC states the meeting took place last Wednesday, before lunch, at the Rosewood Villa Magna hotel in Madrid. The front page points out that an Andorran judge is investigating former Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who has been summoned to testify with former ministers Cristóbal Montoro and Jorge Fernández Díaz. In the inside pages, it is stated that the alleged meeting would have taken place two days before the meeting between Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his Andorran counterpart, Xavier Espot.
"Totally false"
The public prosecutor's office responded via a press release in which it denies the information published by ABC and demands a correction. According to the note, the information is "totally false", because Álvaro García Ortiz, who was appointed this week to replace Dolores Delgado as prosecutor general, "has never held any meeting with the person quoted in the news nor with anyone from the alleged banker's entourage; neither in the place and date mentioned nor any other place".
Not only that, the note states the public prosecutor's office has formally requested that ABC has been formally requested to immediately rectify the information published and, moreover, that it be done on its front page. It warns that the public prosecutor's office has no "prejudice to exercise, if necessary, appropriate actions".
The Andorran judiciary's investigation on Rajoy's intervention began in 2016, following a statement by Higini Cierco, in which he explained that as from May 2014 both he and BPA CEO, Joan Pau Miquel, were coerced and extorted, first by inspector Celestino Barroso, Interior attaché of the Spanish embassy in Andorra, and then by commissioner Marcelino Martín Blas, aka Fèlix, in order to get information on the Andorran bank accounts of Artur Mas, Oriol Junqueras and the Pujol family. Cierco and Miquel were threatened with the closure of the Andorran bank (BPA) and its Spanish subsidiary, Banco Madrid. Finally, the threat was carried out, and both banks were shut down on March 10th, 2015.