This Wednesday, the Community of Madrid sent false information to the media with the intention of intimidating journalists from EL PAÍS by spreading their names and image, after a routine identification by the police in charge of the president's security. The Community accused two EL PAÍS journalists who were working on the street looking for information of harassing residents of the building where President Isabel Díaz Ayuso lives.
The Community of Madrid has released the identity and a photograph of two EL PAÍS journalists this Wednesday. He has falsely suggested their criminal conduct in order to intimidate the press at a time when the president of Madrid is being questioned about the alleged tax fraud that her partner, Alberto González Amador, has confessed to. The two reporters were identified by a police officer when they were trying to verify the evidence about an alleged illegal work in the residence where González Amador and the Madrid leader, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, live.
These personal data were communicated to the general director of security of the Community of Madrid and were then disseminated by Ayuso's team to the media, which have distorted the facts, without any verification, falsely accusing reporters of harassment of minors and of an attempt to raid the president's home. The data of any person identified by the security forces is confidential and, therefore, cannot be provided to third parties or, of course, disseminated to the media.
The team of the president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has also reported that “hooded journalists” from eldiario.es tried to “assault” the home, an accusation that this medium has denied.
The two EL PAÍS journalists sought to find out if the partner of the Madrid president, Alberto González Amador, carried out alleged illegal work on his home, acquired two years ago, after having committed an alleged tax fraud of 350,000 euros. González Amador and President Isabel Díaz Ayuso have resided in that property since last year, as the Madrid leader confirmed last week. Suspicions about the alleged illegal work arose last week, when eldiario.es published that González Amador owns an apartment on the sixth floor of the building and his lawyer owns the home that is just above it, on the seventh floor. This suggests that the two properties could be joined into a duplex, which requires a licensed work.
When consulting the public database of urban planning licenses of the Madrid City Council, Conex, this newspaper verified that only a responsible declaration from González Amador, dated August 4, 2022, to carry out works on the sixth floor, appeared for those properties. Two months later, the City Council declared that document ineffective, a resolution that appears in Conex. Since there is no subsequent license in that database, this newspaper tried to verify if the reform was carried out without permission.
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To verify this hypothesis, this newspaper requested on Thursday for transparency from the Madrid City Council “all licenses and responsible declarations, as well as possible initiations, resolutions and sanctioning files opened at the address” where González Amador and the president reside.
Since then, no response has been received from the City Council and several reports have appeared about possible irregularities, although none definitively confirms whether the work had been carried out. For this reason, EL PAÍS journalists went to the area on Tuesday afternoon to make the simple inquiry of speaking with neighbors or merchants who knew if they had recently observed signs of a renovation in that building.
They spoke to several neighbors who left the building between 7:00 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. When they were about to leave the area, a man in his 50s, dressed in civilian clothes, approached the two journalists and identified himself as the National Police, showing a badge. In a cordial conversation, he asked them to identify themselves and they gave them their professional credentials and ID. The agent retreated a few meters towards a vehicle and took note of the personal information. Two men also in civilian clothes who did not identify themselves observed the scene a few meters away. After this, the agent returned with the documentation and the two reporters left.
An hour later, President Isabel Díaz Ayuso's team sent a message to different journalists with the name and photo of the EL PAÍS journalists and the following paragraphs: “They have been harassing the president's neighbors, including minor girls. of age, in a harassment common in dictatorships. Everything has been reported to the National Police, but the Government delegate will protect these actions. The Government delegate does not want to put permanent 24-hour surveillance in the president's house, which is an anomaly. Additionally, employees of eldiario.es Hooded, they tried to access the president's house. This intimidation has never been seen in democracy.”
The agent who identified the two journalists belongs to the Madrid president's static bodyguard who, as established by protocols, subsequently reported the incident to the head of bodyguards. He later provided it to the general director of Security of the Community of Madrid.
The information on the identity of the two journalists, which within just two hours of being obtained was already in some media outlets, came from the Community of Madrid which, although it has assured that there is a complaint against the journalists, does not There was none on Wednesday night, as confirmed by this newspaper.
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