Julio Corrochano, former director of security at BBVA, has presented before the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón a letter in which he affirms that “the decision to hire this company”, in reference to Cenyt, the epicenter of the company’s corporate network Retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, “was the president”, alluding to Francisco González, charged since 2019 in this macro-summary of police and business corruption. In the 41-page letter, Corrochano also implicates the then head of human resources, Ángel Cano, who was later appointed CEO of BBVA, and affirms that up to seven departments of the bank participated in a coordinated manner in this contract.
The accusation of the former director coincides with the one made by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office in February 2020. Then the public prosecutor accused González of hiring Villarejo “in an opaque way” for BBVA “knowing that he was an active policeman”. The judge investigates in separate piece number 9 of the Tandem case, the macro-summary opened to investigate the allegedly illegal activities of Villarejo, the work carried out by the commissioner for BBVA between 2004 and 2017. The investigations have revealed, so far, a total of 18 orders from the financial institution, some without mediation written contract, for which the commissioner pocketed a total of 10.3 million euros. About twenty people are charged in this piece, including Villarejo himself, former President González, Corrochano and other former directors, as well as BBVA as a legal entity. Among the victims of these illegal espionage are journalists, businessmen and politicians.
In the letter, Corrochano, who held senior positions in the National Police during his time as commissioner, details that BBVA decided to contract the services of an investigation company when the construction company Sacyr announced, in 2004, that it wanted to enter the capital of the financial entity. The former director assures that Cenyt, Villarejo’s company, was finally chosen after ruling out another detective agency, Kroll, because it was being used, precisely, by the company then chaired by Luis del Rivero.
The former head of security, who was the interlocutor between BBVA and Villarejo during the 13 years that he did work for the entity, maintains in his writing that he never knew that Villarejo was still active, and this despite acknowledging that he had a deep relationship staff with the retired commissioner, since they met in 1974, in San Sebastián, when both participated as police officers in the fight against ETA. “It was unimaginable that the situation in Villarejo was that of the active police because such a situation would clash with the daily activities that he carried out. His daily activity, travel, his management and direction of the companies and the appearance that he exhibited from his offices in Torre Picasso in Madrid ”, he affirms in the letter in an attempt to avoid the bribery accusation.
Along with González, the former head of security at BBVA points to Ángel Cano, then head of Human Resources and later CEO, as a participant in the hiring of Villarejo. “The contract was drawn up by Cenyt [la empresa del comisario] incorporating the changes suggested by the bank’s Legal Department. Cano, at that time, was also the bank’s code of conduct supervisor and it was he who was in charge of the supplier’s approval and that the payment of their invoices was in accordance with the procedure established in the bank’s protocol, ”he details in the writing.
Corrochano insists that he “did not set the terms of the contract or specifically on which people the information was required,” in reference to the people spied on. Regarding the Sacyr operation, he affirms that the then president González ordered him not to speak anything with José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, CEO of the bank at that time, “because he thought that perhaps he could also be behind this takeover bid”. González also “suspected that a member of the Government could be behind this takeover bid,” he says in the letter. The former director of security affirms that he was only allowed to speak to Cano and the then general director of communication and image of BBVA, Javier Ayuso, about these works by Villarejo.
Security contract in June 2016
The document breaks down the contracts signed by the former head of security and highlights among the most relevant the one that was signed “at the initiative of the Security Department” on June 1, 2016. Carlos Torres, current president, was appointed CEO of BBVA in May of 2015, for which he had been in office for 13 months when this agreement with Cenyt was closed.
The purpose of the contract was to analyze the risk of the countries in which the BBVA group was located and what could affect the movement of senior management, such as international and jihadist terrorism, etc.
Corrochano affirms that “the contract was going to be revised at the beginning of 2018 to reduce it by 65 or 70%” because Indra had been hired for these services. “Upon learning that a judicial investigation had been opened against Cenyt, it was decided to terminate the contract early,” it says in the letter. Corrochano affirms that, according to the forensic report “commissioned by BBVA, purchasing regulations were followed in contracting.”
In his writing, Corrochano questions all the documents in the summary, including the telephone conversations in which he appears with his voice. His lawyer, María Mormeneo, says that “he does not know if the Excel files that are attached to the procedure respond with certainty to the real traffic of calls from the phones identified in this case, or are documents prepared without real support of the real traffic of those calls ”.
And he adds: “This defense had serious difficulties to understand what was recorded in the audio files contributed to the procedure and we can firmly affirm that they have been manipulated, and they are only pieces and selected fragments of conversations cut, pasted, taken out of context, pretending what that it is not and thus it seems that something is said that was not said. What action protocol and what control has been followed in all this handling operation? ”.