“There is nothing strange that Villarejo commented on the arrests”

The 2009 commissioner’s notes Jose Manuel Villarejo in which he alerted the businessman Ignacio López del Hierrothe husband of the then general secretary of the PP María Dolores de Cospedal, of the arrests and police actions that Judge Baltasar Garzón had ordered in the frame of the Gurtel operation against charges, employees and collaborators of the PP are not sufficient indications to continue investigating, as the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office claimed, the alleged involvement of the former president of Castilla-La Mancha in the espionage of the former treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenas.

This is the conclusion of the magistrates that make up the Third Section of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court Félix Alfonso Guevara Marcos, Carolina Rius Alarcó and Ana María Rubio Encinas, the latter as rapporteur, who confirm the decision of the investigating judge Manuel García Castellon of file the case against Cospedal, her husband and against who was the number two of the then Castilian-Manchego president José Luis Ortiz Grande, as reported by El Periódico de España.

“If those notes coincided with the arrests of people affiliated with the Popular Party, It is not surprising that José Manuel Villarejo commented on it with Ignacio López del Hierro given the relationship he had with María Dolores de Cospedalgeneral secretary of said political party and the one that the first two maintained for many years, at least twenty, said Ignacio López del Hierro in his statement in the investigation, meeting from time to time and commenting, among others, current and media issues as they were undoubtedly arrests of members of one of the majority political parties in Spain”, highlight the magistrates in the order, in which they reject that the facts be further investigated, and confirm the prosecution of the leadership of the Police of the Government of Mariano Rajoy, including former Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz.

In the first place, the Chamber downplays Villarejo’s notes from 2008 and 2009 because they were produced five years before the Kitchen operation broke out: “There is an absolute disconnect between these notes from the year 2009 that refer to Ignacio López del Hierro as ILH and the facts investigated in this procedure that were developed, according to the appealed order, between the years 2012 and 2013″.

However, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office considered these notes very relevant, since they indicated the beginning of relations between Cospedal and Villarejo, almost always with López del Hierro as an intermediary. According to a recording released in the press, Cospedal’s husband came to assure Villarejo in 2008 that they would turn to him for “specific jobs”. And one of these works would be, always according to Anticorruption, the Kitchen operation.

In this sense, on January 26, 2009, a month before the arrest of the leader of the Gürtel, Francisco Correa, Villarejo notes in his notebooks that López del Hierro had told him that his “relative” wanted “data to make decisions & rdquor ;. In other notes, the retired commissioner, who presented himself in police circles as a person of Cospedal’s utmost confidence, asks his chief of staff to transfer different data and information of a police nature.

As for the annotations of 2013, the year in which the espionage of Luis Bárcenas took place, the magistrates recall that on November 6 there is an annotation on “ILH”, which says “COSPE: Very concerned with the 5 payments of 200. Please ask me to keep you informed & rdquor ;. Here too, the magistrates have no suspicion that the then general secretary of the PP had arranged a payment to Villarejo for one of his jobs, about whose testimony they have no doubt: “About this annotation María Dolores de Cospedal was asked by the instructor and pointed out not knowing what he meant, stating both she and Ignacio López del Hierro who had never done any professional commission to José Manuel Villarejo“.

And as an indication that convinces the magistrates to prevent the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office from continuing to investigate whether Cospedal was aware of the espionage on Bárcenas, the magistrates also resort to the words of the retired commissioner and other defendants: “These annotations and messages not enough clues participation of Ignacio López del Hierro or María Dolores de Cospedal in the facts under investigation, since they are weakened by the testimonies of those under investigation José Manuel Villarejo, Sergio Ríos and Andrés Manuel Gómez Gordo”, say the judges, who also recall that both Cospedal like her husband, they recognized the meetings with Villarejo, although for reasons outside the facts investigated.

The judges also believe the version given by Cospedal, López del Hierro and Villarejo, who had denied the participation of the former secretary general of the PP in the recruitment of the driver from Bárcenas, Sergio Ríos, as an informant on the movements of the former treasurer of the PP: “Although there is a coincidence of dates in the message from Ignacio López del Hierro and the agenda note, the investigated José Manuel Villarejo does not remember having gone to that one to establish a relationship with Sergio Ríos Esgueva. […] That María Dolores de Cospedal called José Manuel Villarejo by phone is not necessarily indicative either that it was to influence his approach to Sergio Ríos through Andrés Manuel Gómez Gordo, since neither one nor the other place it in the rapprochement that took place between the twoas far as this procedure is concerned”, they conclude.

The Criminal Chamber of the National High Court has rejected all appeals against Judge Manuel García-Castellón’s order in which he concluded the investigation of the Kitchen case and confirms the existence of evidence to judge the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior during the Government of Mariano Rajoy, including who was a minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, for the illegal police operation launched with the aim of stealing material related to the judicial investigation of the Gürtel case from former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas.

In a total of 13 proceedings, unlike its latest resolutions, which have been a setback for the conclusions of the instructor García-Castellón, the Chamber fully dismisses all the appeals filed by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, the PSOE and Podemos political parties and the defenses of the eleven people who will finally sit on the bench. This means definitively leaving out of the procedure the former general secretary of the PP María Dolores de Cospedal and her husband, businessman Ignacio López del Hierro, whose imputation had once again been requested by the public ministry and the rest of the accusations.

In addition to Fernández Díaz, the instructor considered that the former Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martínez, the former Deputy Director of Operations (DAO) Eugenio Pino, the police officers José Luis Olivera, Marcelino Martín Blas, José Ángel Fuentes should be tried for these events. Gago, Bonifacio Díez Sevillano, Enrique García Castaño and Andrés Manuel Gómez Gordo, as well as the commissioner José Manuel Villarejo and the one who was Bárcenas’ driver Sergio Ríos.

The judge considers the constitutive facts of the crimes of discovery and disclosure of secrets, prevarication, omission of the duty to prosecute crimes, bribery, influence peddling and embezzlementalthough the accusations will be outlined in their qualification writings against those they consider responsible for these practices.