Luis Bárcenas and his wife, Rosalía Iglesias, pointed with special emphasis this Monday at one accused in the Kitchen case trial: Sergio Ríos, whom the former popular treasurer hired as a driver in early 2013 and who, they insisted, became their “go-to guy” and their man of “total trust” before betraying them. “We spoke in front of him as if he were another member of the family,” the wife specified to exemplify the enormous degree of “access” he had to their privacy. Thus, following their interrogations as witnesses before the National Court tribunal, the couple has thrown the former chauffeur under the bus, who is a key piece of the espionage operation concocted in 2013 against the former PP finance chief. The Prosecutor’s Office is asking for Ríos to be sentenced to almost 12 and a half years in prison.
Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo was in charge of recruiting Sergio Ríos as an informant, with the aim of him providing confidential information to the plot. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office maintains that the suspects were then looking for sensitive documentation that Bárcenas might still keep from high-ranking PP officials, and the driver emerged as an ideal way to achieve this. To get him to collaborate, according to the summary, he was also paid with money from reserved funds (more than 53,000 euros, according to the investigations). And Commissioner Enrique García Castaño, also implicated, stated in the investigation that he even handed over several electronic devices from the former popular accountant to clone them and thus extract the information.
Rosalía Iglesias told the court this Monday that she noticed a significant “change” in Sergio Ríos. From maintaining a “protective attitude” towards her (especially when her husband entered pre-trial detention in mid-2013), he became “very nervous,” drove “erratically,” and even appeared “defiant.” Also, as the witness emphasized, “he was quite interested in knowing who I had seen”: “And in wanting to accompany me with everyone I met.”
To emphasize his ability to handle and access their information, the couple explained that they entrusted the driver with very delicate tasks. Such as the transfer of material that Bárcenas took from the PP’s central headquarters, on Génova street. Or the delivery of sensitive documentation to his then lawyer, Javier Gómez de Liaño —a point confirmed by the lawyer: “He occasionally brought some papers to the office”—. And, Bárcenas even said, he told his wife to send Sergio Ríos to pay a prison mate who was going to destroy a supposed recording he kept of Mariano Rajoy about the party’s slush fund. “The driver handed him the money. I give the instruction. My wife confirmed to me that she had given the money to Sergio Ríos,” the former treasurer insisted.
The “trust,” as both reiterated, was absolute. “Sergio had the keys to my studio every time I asked him to go,” Rosalía Iglesias added, referring to the premises that the plot monitored and which García Castaño accessed, according to his own version. But, although she never suspected at that moment that he was spying on them, the former treasurer’s wife’s suspicions multiplied. And she asked her husband to cut ties completely. Bárcenas did so, as he explained this Monday, visibly annoyed with his ex-chauffeur, whom he says he paid in “cash” and off the books because the driver was “unemployed” and thus would not lose his unemployment benefits. “He was getting paid triple!” he exclaimed: “I was paying him, Social Security was paying him, and he was being paid from the reserved funds!”
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Ríos’s defense tried to question Bárcenas’s version during their turn to interrogate him. However, they did not ask Rosalía Iglesias any questions: “Following express instructions from my client, I have no questions,” his lawyer stated.
On the other hand, the court has postponed the testimony of Manuel Morocho, chief inspector of the National Police and lead investigator of Gürtel, who recounted during the investigation phase how he received pressure from his superiors to sabotage his inquiries.
Bárcenas’s contacts with Rajoy and Villarejo
Luis Bárcenas’s testimony before the court, which lasted nearly five hours, offered details of some alleged contacts he maintained before the outbreak of Operation Kitchen in 2013. The former popular treasurer recounted that, before his wife testified in 2012 at the National Court, he spoke with Mariano Rajoy, then Prime Minister, to spare Rosalía Iglesias from having to walk past television cameras. “I asked Rajoy if my wife could access the National Court through a route that wouldn’t subject her to pressure from journalists. Rajoy discussed it with the Minister of Justice, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, and the matter was resolved. The Commissioner of the National Court at that time contacted my wife, they sent a car to my house, picked her up, and she entered through the National Court’s garage,” the former PP accountant emphasized to the judges.
In response to questions from the parties, Bárcenas also stressed that, around 2009, he met Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo in a restaurant, but at the time he did not know who that agent was. According to his version, while he was at the establishment, a group of police officers sat at a nearby table, among whom was a commander whom the former treasurer considered responsible for the Gürtel investigations. At one point, the former popular leader indicated, he went over to that table to converse with the agent he knew, without knowing who the other two accompanying him were, and whom he would later identify as Villarejo and Commissioner José Luis Olivera, both accused in the Kitchen case.
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