The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office is not willing to let the “noise” muddy the first great trial of José Manuel Villarejo in the National High Court. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has counterattacked this Wednesday after the defense took advantage of the preliminary questions phase, in which the oral hearing is still immersed, to present the retired commissioner as the victim of a conspiracy of “all levels of the system” to “Annihilate it.” Prosecutor Miguel Serrano has insisted that this process focuses on the “business network” that the agent created to collect from individuals for making espionage orders taking advantage of his positions in the Corps: “We do not deny that Villarejo was an intelligence police or a spy , but he took advantage of that condition to profit ”, he said.
The Prosecutor’s Office, which has taken the floor this Wednesday to respond to the defense, has wanted to define his accusation from the beginning to try to dismantle Villarejo’s strategy. The defendant maintains that he never committed a crime with his businesses because they were part of the cover he had as an undercover agent and, therefore, were essential for his functions. However, Anti-Corruption paints a very different scenario. The Public Ministry has insisted that it “does not doubt” that Villarejo worked as “practicing intelligence police”; nor that he had the “structural condition of collaborator of the CNI”; nor even that he could “be authorized” to “manage his private company.” But, he had an immediate impact, “for what he was not authorized, nor could he be authorized, is to profit outside of that activity based on the knowledge” and data he obtained as a policeman.
“The essence of our accusation is that he was a policeman,” Serrano said: “He received gifts with abuses of his police functions, performing parallel functions for private clients.” “We do not deny that Villarejo was a spy or collaborated with the CNI. What happens is that he took advantage of that condition to profit. That is what is absolutely intolerable and what is reprehensible ”. And he has riveted: “It is as if he does not want to know what the prosecutor is accusing him of. But you have to focus. Witches don’t exist. But if, as they say, there are them, look for them outside of this procedure. ” The summary reveals that the plot accessed confidential databases for the alleged espionage orders it received from companies or individuals. In return, they paid him millionaire amounts.
Prosecutors, judges and former ministers
With that context as a backdrop and after Villarejo put on the table a whole battery of names of possible witnesses, the prosecutor has recovered them this Wednesday to reel them off. The prosecution has rejected that those people who “are not in a position” to explain whether the retired commissioner had authorization to “carry out certain operations” or to “use their companies to contract with private clients” from parading in court: such as former Presidents Felipe González and Mariano Rajoy; the prosecutors Manuel Moix, Eduardo Torres-Dulce and Javier Zaragoza; o Fernando Andreu and Alejandro Abascal, magistrates of the National High Court.
Serrano has also opposed declaring those who “did not have legal capacity to authorize him”: such as former ministers José Luis Corcuera and Jorge Fernández Díaz; o Rafael Vera and José Antonio Nieto, former Secretaries of State. And, as he has added, he refuses to question Pedro Sánchez, current Prime Minister; Fernando Grande-Marlaska, responsible for the Interior; or to Dolores Delgado, State Attorney General, for simple comments they made in the press about the former policeman, as requested by the defense
The public prosecutor only accepts the testimonies that can “help” to elucidate the object of the accusation: that is, if Villarejo abused his position to profit. For this reason, Anticorrupción agrees to question former senior officials of the National Police, such as commissioners Eugenio Pino, Pedro Díaz-Pintado and Florentino Villabona, former heads of the Corps; to Francisco Martínez, former number two indoor; and to Félix Sanz Roldán, who was the head of the CNI. The Prosecutor’s Office also supports the declaration of the presenter Ana Rosa Quintana, since her husband is accused in the trial for hiring the commissioner and she was present at a meeting where the subject was discussed. Podemos already proposed it, but the court rejected it.
Since last October, the National Court welcomes a triple trial of the plot led by Villarejo. The Criminal Chamber decided to bring together three lines of investigation in this hearing that were instructed separately: the so-called Iron, Land and Painter Pieces. The first concerns the hiring of the commissioner by the firm Herrero & Asociados to allegedly spy on another law firm. Land focuses on the family war of the heirs of Luis García-Cereceda, the developer who built the luxury development La Finca in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid). And Pintor investigates whether businessman Juan Muñoz Tamara, Quintana’s husband, signed Villarejo to illegally obtain data from a former partner, from whom he claimed a debt.
#prosecutor #Villarejo #deny #spy #advantage #condition #profit