The judge investigating the illegal espionage by the Ministry of the Interior on the former treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenas accumulates more evidence of a police operation that lasted two years, was carried out behind the judge’s back and was paid with reserved funds. The open war between Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo and Chief Commissioner of the Internal Affairs Unit Marcelino Martín Blas triggered a series of complaints in January 2015 that pointed to the existence of Operation Kitchen. The judge has now incorporated that evidence into the summary.
A police report sent to the National Court last October collects all the documents related to Operation Kitchen found in the records of the homes and offices of Commissioner Villarejo after his arrest in November 2017.
Among those documents, some of them not incorporated into the case due to the fact that they could be under the protection of the Official Secrets Law, the police highlight two complaints from early 2015 presented by Villarejo against a colleague, the then chief commissioner of the Unit. of Internal Affairs, Marcelino Martín Blas. At that time, both commissars had already declared war. Martín Blas was investigating the criminal activities of Villarejo by order of an investigating judge from Plaza de Castilla. And Villarejo defended himself from that investigation by launching accusations against Martín Blas.
On January 19, 2015, Villarejo filed a complaint against Martín Blas at the Police Operational Deputy Directorate with registration number 884. “Commissioner Marcelino,” wrote Villarejo, “knows perfectly well that the numbers to which he employs to hide my identity with collaborators with a high level of risk and sensitivity such as SERGIO LÓPEZ (Cook) ”. In this complaint, Villarejo refers to the fact that one of the informants that he has and with whom he uses a false man is El Cocinero, Nickname given to Sergio Ríos, Bárcenas’ driver who ended up being the police confidant to find out where the former PP treasury kept documentation that could implicate popular leaders in the crimes that the National Court was investigating.
In the same complaint, Villarejo assures that Marcelino Martín Blas was giving “fundamental data to other organizations without authorization from the National Police, such as the identity and information that El Cocinero provides.”
When Villarejo wrote this complaint, Bárcenas’ driver, alias El Cocinero, had provided information to the commissioners that had allowed them to obtain some documents in the possession of the former treasurer, according to the judicial investigation. And Villarejo reproached Martín Blas for having provided that information to “other organizations”.
Martín Blas is accused in Operation Kitchen, but has denied that he participated in the police operation of espionage to the ex-treasurer of the PP and his family. Despite this, some agents from his department sporadically followed up on Bárcenas’s wife, as those involved in that operation have admitted to the judge.
The name of Martín Blas does not appear in most of the evidence proving the existence of Operation Kitchen, but some commissioners, including Villarejo, implicate him in the illegal espionage of Bárcenas.
José Manuel Villarejo expanded his complaint against Marcelino Martín Blas a few months later. On May 5, 2015, he assured in the complaint registered under number 193 that Martín Blas “together with certain CNI commanders continuously report to the Chief of Cabinet of the Vice Presidency of the Government and is using the means of his department for tasks contrary to his mission”. “Among others,” he continued, “surveillance of politicians of certain tendencies or harassment of policemen related to corruption issues such as Gürtel, among others in order to stop them investigating in a certain sense. This claim was never proven true.
The many signs of a felony
Magistrate Manuel García Castellón already has numerous indications of an illegal operation paid for with public money from reserved funds with the sole objective of obstructing the work of the justice that was investigating the illegal financing of the party in the Government. In the summary, testimonies are accumulated from police commissioners who acknowledge that the illegal espionage took place, that there was an informant who was paid with reserved funds and that the information obtained was never made available to the judge who was investigating the facts. In the same summary there are recordings, seized from Villarejo, which prove how the informant informed the police of the steps taken by the Bárcenas family. And there are also receipts for the monthly salary that Bárcenas’s driver was paid for his confidences.
