The limits of ‘Operation Catalonia’ are so uncertain that Neither the prosecution nor the Spanish courts have ever found motive to open a procedure to jointly investigate the practices against the independence movement developed by certain agents during the Government of Mariano Rajoy. The admission to processing of a complaint by the employer Sandro Rosell by a Madrid court in which he framed the cause for which he was imprisoned for two years as part of ‘Operation Catalonia’ and acted as a facilitator of four other complaints in which different people denounced his particular case. Three of those five complaints have already been filed and the prosecutor’s office has reported against all of themlegal sources informed EL PERIÓDICO.
Not even in the case with fifty pieces that is being followed in the National Court against the police sewers and whose main defendant is the former commissioner. Jose Manuel Villarejo There is an investigation into the illegal persecution of the independence movement. The two closest pieces, the one relating to the searches carried out in the Method 3 detective agency and the one about the alleged espionage of the former Latvian consul in Barcelona, ended up archived.
Until now, only the case opened against the former deputy operational director Eugenio Pino for try to insert a source pendrive uncertain in the Pujol case, a procedure initiated at the request of Villarejo himself, which led Vicky Álvarez, ex-partner of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, to denounce the transfer of cash in bags to Andorra. Only the professional zeal of the two instructors who have had the cause, Pablo Ruz and José de la Mata, has prevented it from shipwrecking a procedure that is already awaiting trial, although the delay that the National Court accumulates in scheduling the hearings of the cases without a prisoner makes it very difficult for the former Catalan president to end up sitting in the dock.
In the hands of Villarejo
The fundamental problem of the complaints presented by ‘Operation Catalonia’ is that Most of them are based on what Villarejo stated in television programs or in parliamentary commissions., in which he presents himself as a patriot willing to combine the risk of breaking up Spain that the independence movement may entail with police practices that are at least questionable. But when push comes to shove he does not corroborate his statements before the judge.
That happened with Sandro Rosell, in which the judge considered that is treated as a prosecution witness instead of a defendant, which must also mean admitting that, as he declared before him, two of the four defendants are not the people who would have participated in the alleged trap plotted against the former president of Barça, especially because the former commissioner takes great care in saying that He stayed away because he did not share the suspicions about the businessman’s business. Thus, he did not provide the judge with any details that would allow the investigation to advance.
In the file of the complaint filed by the former Minister Jaume Giróthe Madrid Court says that the events reported They do not constitute a crime and if they did, they would be prescribed, Therefore, a criminal procedure cannot be opened based on speculation and press reports, even though these reflect the notes that Villarejo had about the ‘Catalonia operation’ in his personal agendas and that appear in the recordings he made of the people he met. gathered.
Precisely, Rosell’s representation asked the court to request testimony from the National Court about the audios and Villarejo’s agendas, a procedure that The magistrate did not consider it necessary to proceed with the filing of the proceedings after questioning the defendants. just before summer. The delay in the file was due to the delay with which the public ministry reported in favor of the file.
The third filed complaint is the one filed by the former Police Chief of Catalonia Narciso Ortega. The magistrate does not see sufficient evidence of the persecution that he denounces to continue with the investigations, so he decrees a free dismissal.
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Furthermore, in the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid awaits the final decision to the rogatory commission sent by Andorra to interrogate the former president as accused Mariano Rajoy and his former ministers Jorge Fernández Díaz and Cristóbal Montoro for alleged coercion of Private Banking of Andorra (BPA) in order to collect bank details of Catalan independence supporters.
The two complaints about ‘Operation Catalonia’ that are still alive in the Madrid courts are those filed by the businessman Carles Sumarroca and by Jean Paul Miquel, CEO of BPA. In the first instance, the public ministry reported in favor of sending the proceedings to the National Court so that it could be investigated as one more piece of those that José Manuel Villarejo has open, such as the Kitchen.