Businessman Alberto González Amador is seeking €100,000 ($108,000) from Sánchez, €50,000 from Justice Minister Félix Bolaños and a retractation of the comments, his legal team told AFP.
Amador, the partner of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, believes Sánchez and Bolaños violated the “respect and protection of a Spanish citizen’s basic rights”, his team said, confirming a report by the daily El Mundo.
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Investigators have been probing allegations of tax fraud against Amador since March after one of his companies offering health services saw its earnings soar during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
Spanish media have said Amador offered a deal to prosecutors in which he would admit the alleged offences in exchange for avoiding a trial and receiving a sentence that would spare him jail.
Sánchez and Bolaños referred to Amador last week as “a confessed criminal who defrauded the treasury”, in a case that has generated a media frenzy in Spain.
Ayuso, a figurehead for the Spanish right and an acerbic critic of Sánchez’s successive left-wing governments since 2018, has said the affair is a “savage” campaign by the state against her.
The populist leader has refused to meet Spain’s PM in a meeting scheduled for this week, arguing that it would be “against the interests of Spain and therefore those of Madrid directly” and that they “have served no purpose” previously.
In a separate decision on Monday, Spain’s top criminal court threw out a complaint by Ayuso’s conservative opposition Popular Party against the Socialists for alleged illegal financing.
The court said the complaint, based on a press report citing anonymous sources, did not justify opening criminal proceedings.