The Kitchen court plays Villarejo’s audios: “We have to rack our brains to find that ‘pendrive’ [of Bárcenas]”

The court for the trial on the Kitchen case, which has been held at the National Court since last April 6, began this Wednesday to play the intercepted audios of Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo. The judges have decided that the recordings can only be listened to by those present in the courtroom and, during their playback, have ordered not to broadcast the video feed of the hearing that is distributed through the YouTube channel of this judicial body. The same measure has also been adopted during the listening of the recorded statements of Commissioner Enrique García Castaño, alias El Gordo, who was removed from the process due to his poor health (earlier, during the investigation phase, he confessed his involvement in the espionage plot against former treasurer Luis Bárcenas). Legal sources explain that the initiative to cut the broadcast was taken to avoid the dissemination of sensitive personal data.

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After two sessions (this Monday and Tuesday) dedicated exclusively to the playback of the multiple appearances of El Gordo, the judges finished this Wednesday listening to the last remaining ones. On this day, the court was able to take note of, for example, how García Castaño assured during the investigation phase that “there were interests in the political sphere” — including, in the environment of the then secretary general of the PP, María Dolores de Cospedal — to access the information that the former popular treasurer might hold, who threatened to blow the whistle in 2013, when the espionage operation called Operation Kitchen was activated.

After finishing with García Castaño’s recordings, the courtroom began playing the audios secretly recorded by Villarejo over the years. At the request of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, the court listened to two conversations of the shadowy commissioner with Bárcenas’s driver, whom the plot recruited as a confidant; and two others with Francisco Martínez, former Secretary of State for Security in Mariano Rajoy’s government and right-hand man of Jorge Fernández Díaz during his tenure as Minister of the Interior (2011-2016).

In one of those recordings, which the defense teams have tried to annul, you can hear how Commissioner Villarejo talks in October 2013 with Bárcenas’s driver about two files that, according to the driver, the former treasurer keeps in his possession inside a pendrive and that contain compromising conversations with Mariano Rajoy and Javier Arenas. Clearly, the policeman urges to locate them and get hold of them: “The only thing is that those kinds of conversations on that pendrive are something that somehow you have to rack your brains to find, man. Since it’s such a small place, anyone can have it anywhere.”

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For its part, in one of the conversations between Villarejo and Martínez, you can hear how they talk about the “concern” existing in the PP over the reports of Chief Inspector Manuel Morocho, the main investigator of the Gürtel case, who denounced during the trial that he suffered “pressures” during his investigations and that they even tried to buy him off with a better-paid position. “El Asturiano is worried,” the commissioner points out at one moment in that talk. El Asturiano is the nickname attributed to Rajoy. “For me, this inspector who commands more than anyone… he really pisses me off,” Martínez states.

This Wednesday’s session — the 23rd of the trial — ended around 2:40 p.m. The hearing will resume next Monday, when more audios of Villarejo will be played. Once all the playback is finished, the interrogation of the 10 accused will begin, including that of former minister Jorge Fernández Díaz.

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