The Internal Affairs Unit (UAI) of the National Police has connected the personal agendas of Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo with the audios that the agent himself secretly recorded of his conversations with María Dolores de Cospedal, former secretary general of the PP. In a new report sent to the investigating judge Antonio Piña, the investigators have communicated that the dates of those files — published by various media outlets and which the National Court has never considered sufficient to re-indict the former popular leader — coincide with several notes recorded in the corrupt official’s diaries. “Promises to pay the debt of 100,” reads one of those highlighted notes in the document. The parties are now waiting to see if the magistrate makes a move.
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Internal Affairs took this step after, through a resolution issued on July 9 and following the insistence of the PSOE, Judge Piña requested a new report from the Police on the audios implicating Cospedal. The magistrate ordered the agents to search “among the seized material” from Commissioner Villarejo to “identify” any type of “email,” “bank transfer,” or conversation with Cospedal and her former partner, businessman Ignacio López del Hierro, that contained “indications of criminality” against the former secretary general of the PP. The instructor also urged that a recording broadcast by the Catalan radio station RAC1 of a conversation between her and Villarejo be requested, where there is an alleged reference to the “cleaning” of the former popular treasurer Luis Bárcenas. And, as a result, the socialists demanded that the former politician be re-indicted.
After analyzing all that material, the National Police sent its new report to the Court judge last week. In that document, accessed by EL PAÍS, Internal Affairs informs the magistrate that “no conversations with Cospedal, suspicious emails, or bank transfers” have been “located” among the material seized from Villarejo and decrypted (almost 40% of the material remains undeciphered). However, as noted next, a correlation has been established between the audios published by RAC1 and the commissioner’s agendas.
The UAI focuses, for example, on the file titled Cospedal-Cataluña-15.9.14m. The report highlights several excerpts from that audio, dated 2014, where Villarejo openly discusses details of Operation Kitchen, the espionage operation devised in 2013 against Luis Bárcenas and recently tried (awaiting sentencing). According to the transcript provided to the judge, among other topics, the commissioner talks about the former treasurer’s driver, who was recruited by the plot as a informant (“They ask me about the cook, which is the code name I give to Bárcenas’s guy”); and also about how “complicated documentation” has been located and that he hopes “the minister has given it to the president.” That conversation continues as follows:
—But did you find it or the CNI? —asks Cospedal.
—No, we found it —answers the commissioner.
—Well, but they found the last one, I don’t know. I know they had found before and more or less cleaned this one of everything he had, right? The president told me, no one else —the PP leader elaborates.
In its new report, Internal Affairs informs Judge Piña that the date of that conversation, as well as part of the content, matches notes Villarejo made in his agenda on that same September 15, 2014, alongside the word “Cospe,” an alias he used to refer to Cospedal. This text linked to the PP secretary general includes four points: “18.15 in Orfila. Change at the end to the headquarters, 7th”; “Requests an analysis of Ezquerra [sic]”; “Understands that he wants to retire me”; and “Promises to pay the debt of 100.”
Internal Affairs assigns enormous value and credibility to the commissioner’s personal agendas. Chief Inspector Gonzalo Fraga, who led the investigation into Kitchen and the corrupt policeman, summarized their importance in a trial as follows: “Villarejo does not deceive himself,” referring to the content of those diaries. In fact, to reinforce this link between Villarejo and Cospedal, the UAI report analyzes three other audios of known conversations between them (published by the press and spread on Telegram by the ultra agitator Luis Pérez, alias Alvise). One of those files is dated January 20, 2013, and according to the investigators, “in the days before and after there are many references to ‘Envelopes to RAJ and COSP’; ‘Barc’s lists’; and contacts with ‘Cospe.”
Cospedal and López del Hierro were indicted in 2021 for the so-called Operation Kitchen — the alleged parapolice plot devised during Jorge Fernández Díaz’s time as Interior Minister in Mariano Rajoy’s government, which allegedly aimed to steal compromising documents Bárcenas kept about the PP —. After completing his investigations, Judge Manuel García-Castellón decided to exclude the couple from the case and did not prosecute them. In April 2022, the Criminal Chamber upheld that magistrate’s decision. Since then, the National Court has not moved from that position and has rejected all attempts to re-indict them, despite requests from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the PSOE (acting as popular accusation) following the publication of the former PP secretary general’s audios. The public prosecutor and the socialists have argued that there is a political branch of Operation Kitchen that has never been brought to trial.
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