The National Court wants to speed up the legal cases against the retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, in provisional prison since November 2017 and the epicenter of one of the largest corruption schemes in the recent history of Spain. The investigating judge, Manuel García-Castellón, has already informed the presidency of the judicial body that the former police officer, who has been locked up without a sentence for more than 1,000 days, is approaching the maximum four years that the law provides. What makes it necessary to adopt the "precise measures to print the actions as quickly as possible."
The permanence of Villarejo in prison is essential, in the opinion of the investigators, to continue unraveling complex investigations that do not stop growing. The process opened in 2017, baptized as Operation Tandem, already accumulates more than 25 lines of investigation and splashes at the highest levels of the State: among others, businessmen from the Ibex 35; to the leadership of the National Police and the Ministry of the Interior during the stage of Jorge Fernández Díaz (PP); and even to the king emeritus, after García-Castellón reopened last July the one known as Carol, initially opened after the discovery of the audios of the retired commissioner with Corinna Larsen, in which she attributed the collection to Juan Carlos I of commissions and the use of front men to hide a supposed fortune.
The Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office and the judge defend that Villarejo's release from prison could endanger everything. Not only because the former police officer can resort to his “wide network of contacts” and flee abroad in order not to answer for his alleged crimes before the Spanish courts. But because, in addition, it can "hide, destroy or alter" vital evidence for the case, as the magistrate insisted in a car of March 20, when he denied the main suspect in the plot his umpteenth request for release - in this On occasion, the retired commissioner alleged that, by remaining behind bars, his life was at risk due to the spread of the coronavirus.
But the law provides that, at most, a defendant can spend four years in preventive detention. And that red line is getting closer and closer. With that factor in mind, the Public Ministry stepped on the accelerator in early May. Anticorruption then concluded the first two lines of investigation of the case (known as Iron and Land) —to which a third (Thew-Pintor) was added in June— and asked to send Villarejo to trial for all of them. The Office of the Prosecutor even took the chest out of its procedural strategy: “The formation of separate pieces, promoted by the public prosecutor from the beginning of the investigation and agreed by the instructor, will allow the prompt prosecution for very diverse crimes of the main members of the alleged criminal organization ”.
This step has been really essential, since sending the retired commissioner to the bench brings the possibility of conviction closer, thus diluting the problem of exceeding the maximum term of four years of provisional prison. Once sentenced, the investigators could continue to pull the strings - the amount of documentation and audios with which the Internal Affairs of the National Police works is enormous - without that pressure on their heads. In fact, Villarejo himself is aware of this and has attacked the plans of the public prosecutor's office: "The judge and prosecutors have decided to close down part of the network that this pseudo-judicial hoax", he wrote in a statement a few weeks ago, where He added: "They want to condemn me as soon as possible so that I can never leave here."
Against this background, García-Castellón sent a letter to the presidency of the National High Court on July 14, according to the minutes of one of the meetings of the Government Chamber of the judicial body held last month. The Criminal Procedure Law obliges judges to report when the provisional prison measure agreed upon on a defendant "exceeds two-thirds of its maximum duration." The objective is that "precise measures can be adopted in this way to give the proceedings the maximum speed", declaring the "absolute preference" in the processing of these procedures over others. And that required the instructor.
More than 100 years in prison
García-Castellón also signed this letter, just one day after taking another key step. On July 13, after the Anticorruption request, the magistrate had signed the first two orders to open an oral trial against Villarejo for the piece Iron, where the commission of the law firm Herrero & Asociados to the retired commissioner to spy on a rival office; and Thew-Pintor, where the retired police officer is blamed for an illegal follow-up operation against a former partner of businessman Juan Muñoz Tamara, husband of popular television presenter Ana Rosa Quintana. Therefore, once the investigation of both is finished, it will now be up to the Criminal Chamber to set the date for the first trials. For researchers, the sooner the better.
After receiving the letter from the judge through the presidency of the Hearing, the Government Chamber has also given a period of 10 calendar days to the magistrate to detail the “obstacles” that he has encountered so that Villarejo has exceeded two thirds of the term maximum of provisional imprisonment and he also adopt "the concrete measures" to accelerate the case, which accumulates thousands of summary pages.
Meanwhile, Villarejo continues in the Estremera prison (Madrid), from where he continues to launch threats to try to get out. But his dark horizon looms: just for Painter, Iron and Land, the Prosecutor's Office asks him for more than 100 years in prison. And there is still a lot of skein to untangle.