Villarejo now says that he informed Rajoy directly of the espionage to Bárcenas

The retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo during his appearance before the Kitchen parliamentary commission, which tries to clarify the alleged use of funds reserved for a parapolice operation to spy on Luis Bárcenas, this Thursday in the Congress of Deputies.JJ Guillén / EFE

The retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, a confessed member of the parapolice plot who illegally spied on the ex-treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenas in 2013, has gone to Congress this Thursday amid great expectations for what he could tell the deputies about Operation Kitchen and older be cautious about the veracity of his words. In the end, skepticism has prevailed over his claims. Some, as resounding as that on at least two occasions he had direct contact via mobile phone messages with the then Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, to inform them of the progress of the espionage on Bárcenas.

The commissioner, who at first had timidly pointed to the former leader of the PP by assuring that he doubted that "Mr. Rajoy was not aware" of that device, has ended up talking about those messages and has even detailed that it made through a phone number "that began with 650 and ends with 10." When the deputy of EH Bildu, Jon Iñarritu, asked him if he had documentation and evidence of these exchanges, the commissioner limited himself to saying that "everything" was in his files, intervened by the police when he was arrested in November 2017, and that he would prove it in a future trial when he hopes to have access to them again.

Villarejo has used his appearance before the commission to present himself as a secondary pawn of Operation Kitchen. Thus, he has limited his participation in the espionage of Bárcenas to "intelligence" tasks to try to locate the documents that the former PP treasury may have allegedly hoarded and that, as he has stressed on several occasions, included so much information that could compromise the PP, then in the Government, how to affect "high institutions of the State." The commissioner, who has admitted that it was he who convinced Sergio Ríos, then the driver of the former PP treasurer, to collaborate in the police, has distanced himself from entering a workshop of Rosalía Iglesias, Bárcenas' wife, to try to steal documentation . And he has insisted that he spent a short time in the operation because he was separated, as he has affirmed,when he allegedly insisted that all the information obtained should end up in the possession of the judge of the National Court Pablo Ruz, who was then investigating the

and that he was never aware of Operation Kitchen.

Despite this supposed secondary role in the espionage of Bárcenas, Villarejo has assured that "a series of people" contacted him "periodically" to convey "concerns of the President of the Government" about the progress of the investigations.

Specifically, it has cited the then Secretary of State for Security, Francisco Martínez - already investigated in the summary of the

;

to the former secretary general of the PP, María Dolores de Cospedal -for whom the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office requested in September her imputation but the judge has still agreed to it-, and to the president of the newspaper

, Mauricio Casals, whom he described as intermediaries "Through which the President of the Government was informed."

In his account, the retired commissioner has assured that he got angry with them because they asked him to report directly to the then leader of the PP about the progress of the investigations on Bárcenas despite the fact that he had already provided the data to them. "What is it, that this man does not trust you?", He assures that he snapped at them. Villarejo added that this crossing of messages was basically with short questions and "monosyllabic" answers. And he has given as an example the interest of Rajoy to know if it was true that the former treasurer could hide part of that documentation in a chalet that he owned in the town of Baqueira Beret.

In his appearance, Villarejo has also implicated in the plot the then director general of the Police, Ignacio Cosidó, who until now has not been charged or called to testify by the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón, instructor of the

. The commissioner has affirmed that it was a member of the Cosidó team who called him to go urgently to the General Directorate of the Police so that the then operative head and alleged plotter of espionage to the ex-treasurer, Commissioner Eugenio Pino, would entrust him participate in it. Villarejo has assured that it was Cosidó himself who told him that day that "this issue is very important" and that "Mr. Rajoy is interested."

Villarejo has also assured that during his participation in the operation he “directly reported” his progress to the former

of Interior, Francisco Martínez, and the then minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, although to this "punctually, very little." In his account peppered with accusations, the commissioner has also included the then vice president of the Government, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, of whom he has assured that she was supposedly informed of what was happening both by Francisco Martínez and by the National Intelligence Center (CNI). ), of which he has affirmed that he had a participation in the operation so far not disclosed in the judicial investigation. The policeman has used part of his interventions to charge against the former director of the secret service, Félix Sanz Roldán, whom he has accused of being behind his imprisonment.