The National Court archives the investigation into the presence of Russian spies in Catalonia during the 'procés'

The Russian spy Sergeyev, alias 'Sergey Fedotov', in an image from a documentary in 1999.

The investigation initiated by the National Police into the presence of Russian espionage agents in Catalonia in the months prior to the illegal referendum of October 1, 2017 and their alleged contacts with people linked to the independence process has been archived by the National High Court for lack of indications of the existence of a crime, according to

and sources close to the police investigation have confirmed to EL PAÍS. Operation Volka (wolf in Russian) began at the end of October 2019 after agents of the anti-terrorist fight verified the passage through Barcelona of General Denís Sergeyev, alias

, just 48 hours before the consultation called by the Executive of Carles Puigdemont was held, as this newspaper announced in November of that year. Sergeyev is a leading member of the Central Intelligence Department of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU), an elite unit of the Russian army that, in recent years, the intelligence services of several countries have linked with supposed destabilization maneuvers in Europe.

For nine months the investigation was open in the Court of Instruction 6 of the National Court, without significant progress, until, in June of last year, the chief prosecutor of the National Court, Miguel Ángel Carballo, presented a brief to be archived . The judge did it a month later. In this letter, according to

, Carballo criticized the work of the police, considering that it had limited itself to providing the testimony of an informant and internet links to press news, most of it from

a portal created in 2014 by a group of investigative journalists specialized in data verification techniques and the use of open source sources for their information.

This portal has uncovered, in recent years, the alleged involvement of GRU agents in various events of worldwide repercussion, including the poisoning in March 2018 of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the United Kingdom.

Last April, the Czech Republic linked this unit to a huge explosion in a munitions depot in 2014 in which two people were killed, in Vrbetice.

Numerous contributions from Bellingcat to these and other cases have been used by the courts of several countries to act legally against members of this Russian group.

More information

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The police provided information from an informant who, to the data already known to have been published in Bellingcat, added information about people close to the Catalan independence movement and their alleged links with Russian agents. This source, according to sources close to the investigation, came to provide the identity of five other GRU spies, including a woman, who had passed through Catalonia, as well as details of three foreign financial entities from which they had allegedly been transferred. funds to finance their movements in Europe, as well as the credit cards used. This informant also pointed out, among others, the Catalan businessman Oriol Soler. Oriole,who is accused in the case brought by a Barcelona court for the alleged diversion of public funds for the holding of that consultation, he is considered part of what was called the "General Staff" of the

, a group of people informally linked to the Government

de Puigdemont who tried to carry out, through the back door, the necessary coordination for the 1-O to be a reality.

Based on this information, the police requested judicial authorization to carry out different procedures, which the Prosecutor's Office opposed, considering that with them those responsible for the investigation were only looking for evidence to confirm “the initial thesis, forgetting that in the criminal process, with all guarantees, this type of investigation is prohibited ". "These statements remain flat on any factual substratum as soon as an attempt is made to see their link or interweaving with the crime under investigation. That they are profiles of people close to the pro-independence theses does not imply a fact that can be investigated, especially when the activities carried out are made in public light and through means that are not in any way illegal, ”added Carballo in his letter.

The Civil Guard has also investigated these events, in their case within the case opened by the Court of Instruction 1 of Barcelona for the alleged diversion of public funds for the holding of the illegal referendum of 1-O. In October 2020, when the National Court had already closed the case opened from the investigation of the National Police, the armed institute detained people from the circle closest to Puigdemont, including Soler, within investigations that sought to clarify how Tsunami Democràtic (a movement in response to the judgment of the

) and the structure that supports the

identity was financed

in Waterloo (Belgium). In those investigations, the alleged connections of the detainees with the Government of Russia were pointed out due to the content of some telephone conversations that showed how the detainees sought a rapprochement with the Kremlin during the Catalan autumn of 2017 and in the following months.

As revealed then by a judge's order, one of the detainees, Víctor Terradellas, had to travel to Russia in May 2018 to meet with a group created “in the time of Gorbachev” and develop a cryptocurrency platform. It was he who told Puigdemont, on October 24, 2017, days before the illegal consultation, that Russia was willing to mobilize 10,000 soldiers and pay the Catalan debt if Catalonia became independent. According to the order, Tarradellas assured in a conversation that Puigdemont rejected that help. In a report, the Civil Guard pointed to these events as proof that "Russian interference as a geopolitical strategy measure of destabilization was a fact during the autumn of 2017." The judge's order also cited Oriol Soler,of which he highlighted that he met with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in November 2017 as part of “the disinformation and destabilization strategy in which the Kremlim Government would also have participated as part of a narrative of a European Union on the brink of of the collapse ”. Soler, the car highlighted, traveled in June 2017 to Saint Petersburg.