The Valencian Court’s third division reached a consensus with the thirteen judges from the Instruction Court handling the Azud case, approving the process of selecting files from digital devices—phones, computers, and tablets—seized from individuals under investigation. Initially, the scope included roughly sixty people. In March, a judge ordered the defendants and related parties to receive copies of the transcripts from computer and mobile phone data used in the trial. From a legal standpoint, the act of determining what data is useful or useless for the case is described as judicial liquidation (citation: court ruling on data handling in the Azud case).
This ruling triggered an appeal by the defense team representing businessman Jaime Febrer, attorney José María Corbín, and one additional person under investigation. Febrer pressed to annul the court’s document selection process and sought to exclude all materials obtained from servers, computers, hard drives, and mobile devices from the Civil Guard’s UCO reports and from the judicial proceedings. The argument centered on the potential violation of constitutionally protected rights (citation: defense brief on data vetting and privacy protections).
Denies rights violations
The three judges of the Valencian Court’s third division, after reviewing the appeals, told the three appellants that there had been no breach of rights that would create a vulnerability or justify invalidating the process. They noted that no rights were violated to an extent that would propel a reversal of the case as requested (citation: appellate court decision on rights and remedies).
They further stated that any invalidation of the procedure or any of its phases would require evidence of procedural irregularity, which they did not observe in this instance. Consequently, the court did not endorse the view that the data dump conducted by the magistrate should be condemned in any way. The ruling reaffirms that the sequence of actions, including the collection and review of digital evidence, remained within the bounds of established procedure (citation: court disposition on procedural regularity).