Sandro Rosellformer president of Barcelona Soccer Club preventively imprisoned for two years and acquitted in the oral trial against him, ratified this Wednesday, May 10, his criminal complaint against the former commissioner Jose Manuel Villarejo, two other ex-police officers and a former FBI associate in Spain, before Judge Hermenegildo Barrera, head of Madrid’s investigating court number 13, which is investigating the so-called Operation Catalonia against the independence movement. Immediately, the judge issued a resolution in which he summons Villarejo to give a statement as a defendant for next May 26.
Judge Barrera, as Rosell’s lawyer explained, Paul Molins, to EL PERIÓDICO, asked the injured party several questions about the claims in the complaint. One of them was whether he believed that the judge who ordered his admission to prison, carmen lamela, head of the investigative court number 3 of the National Court, on May 25, 2017, had committed fraud (willingness to commit a crime knowing its illegality). Although Rosell’s complaint, prepared by Molins, is not directed against Lamela, he leaves the door open for its expansion based on the evidence that can be obtained in the investigation, including the current magistrate of the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court .
The brief recalls that Rosell has already sued Lamela before the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, presided over by Manuel Marchenafor alleged crimes of prevarication and falsehood, a complaint that was dismissed by order of January 29, 2021. The reason for that complaint: hide from the defense the content of a request sent by the US authorities to Spain that kicked off the investigations of the National Court on Rosell, which led to requesting an unconditional prison that the magistrate specified.
hidden commission rogatory
That letter of request remained hidden – without providing the parties – according to judicial sources told EL PERIÓDICO, in Lamela’s office for two years. These same sources point to an official who acted as “little boss & rdquor; in the central investigative court number 3 that acted above the secretary of the same. Sandro Rosell’s defense requested Magistrate Lamela up to three times for a copy of the letters rogatory from the US. But the court officials and the magistrate herself replied that the documents had not been included in the case. They had apparently been returned to US authorities.
When the case was elevated to the trial chamber that was preparing the oral trial against Rosell, his defense again requested the document at the hearing. The central investigative court number 3 handed over the 2015 document, which should have been provided to the defense when the complaint of the National Court Prosecutor’s Office was filed, in April 2017, against Rosell.
Judicial sources tell this newspaper that said document was bad news for the investigation and therefore it was not provided to the defense. These sources point out that the official who downplayed that US communication shared the document with Judge Lamela. Asked the lawyer Paul Molins what could have been the consequence if that letters rogatory from the USA had been communicated, as was mandatory, to Sandro Rosell, at the time the complaint was filed against him by the Prosecutor’s Office, stated: “The investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office cited the international rogatory commission (CRI) as the starting point of its proceedings. If in April 2017, before putting Sandro Rosell in prison in May, they had given us a transfer of the original version and the translation that the Police had made, the errors would have been uncovered. They said that he had an account at Goldman Sachs, USA, hence the direct interest of US prosecutors in possible transfers from New York to accounts in Spain, and it turns out that it was false. Sandro had an account with that entity, but in the United Kingdom. With that document we could dismantle what they were up to.”
prevarication dismissed
In Sandro Rosell’s complaint against Lamela before the Supreme Court, magistrate Pablo Llarena, who was a rapporteur, dismissed the prevarication because the account of the facts did not demonstrate Lamela’s personal interest in hiding the document; according to him he maintained, if this possible interest was not highlighted, it could simply be a mistake in court. However, when the oral trial began, on January 25, 2019, when the previous questions were addressed, Rosell’s defense requested once again -after being denied three times by Judge Lamela- the CRI documents. The head of the central investigative court number 3 immediately sent the document to the trial room, which allowed access to it by Rosell. The magistrate was no longer Lamela: she had been appointed to the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court in June 2018. She was Maria TardonLamela’s successor magistrate, who immediately sent the documentation.
One of the four defendants is the former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), marc vari, added, at that time, at the US embassy in Spain. Varri, who Rosell’s defense has located in Miami, did not attend the trial of the former president of Barcelona Football Club, and was one of those who concocted the North American international rogatory commission, according to judicial sources, to the point that he was appointed to carry out the investigations that were raised about Rosell’s heritage in Spain. Varri had excellent personal and professional relations with Villarejo.
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The ex-commissioner went so far as to explain to some clients that this ex-agent was part of a group that he had set up to pursue hidden assets in the world. “They are bad, very bad & rdquor ;, said Villarejo in one of his conversations with the ex-lover of Juan Carlos Ithe expert in connecting institutions, businessmen and governments, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.
The Madrid prosecutor, sonia gandolfo, remained silent this Wednesday while Judge Barrera asked Rosell questions. The prosecutor has opposed accumulating a complaint from the shareholders of the Andorran Private Banking (BPA), Brothers circus, which Judge Barrera is already instructing about Rosell. It will be the magistrate who must now decide if he incorporates this complaint into the ongoing investigation, which will continue with Villarejo’s statement on May 26.