Former ministers Jorge Fernández Díaz and María Dolores de Cospedal, in a file image.ULY MARTIN (EL PAÍS)
The
Kitchen case
goes into a little paralysis. The Court of Instruction 6 of the National Court has communicated to the parties that a computer failure in the system has prevented the proceedings from the Criminal Chamber of the appeals filed against the indictment of those involved, as confirmed by legal sources. The magistrates of said body are waiting to receive the allegations to resolve, among other questions, if they confirm the decision of the magistrate Manuel García-Castellón to put Jorge Fernández Díaz, former Minister of the Interior, on the bench; or if they again accuse María Dolores de Cospedal, former secretary general of the PP.
Operation Kitchen was hatched in the Ministry of the Interior in 2013. According to the summary, the Police spied without judicial control on Luis Bárcenas, former treasurer of the PP, after EL PAÍS published
Bárcenas's papers
and when the person in charge of finances Conservative party was preparing to pull the blanket. The instruction emphasizes that the alleged objective of this irregular deployment was to snatch compromising documents from high-ranking members of the training that he could still keep and thus prevent them from reaching Judge Pablo Ruz, who was then investigating the
Gürtel case
and box b of the training.
In a letter, advanced by
El Periódico de España
, the court reports that "a technical problem in the Minerva processing application prevents the computerized process of initiating appeals from being carried out". This incident "is currently pending resolution," continues the document, which records the "serious damage" that this situation can cause "in the course of the proceedings."
The investigating magistrate of the
Kitchen case
, Manuel García-Castellón, closed the investigations last July and processed the political and police leadership of the Ministry of the Interior of the first Government of Mariano Rajoy (2011-2015). Among them, former minister Jorge Fernández Díaz; Francisco Martínez, former Secretary of State for Security; and six commissioners, including José Manuel Villarejo, and Eugenio Pino, head of the Corps operations with the Government of Mariano Rajoy. But both the defenses and the accusations, including the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, appealed that decision, considering that the investigation had been concluded prematurely or erroneously.
The judge, for example, circumscribed all responsibility for Kitchen to Interior and left out the leadership of the PP, thus dismissing Cospedal.
However, the public ministry insists that the former secretary general "intervened" in the operation together with her husband, businessman Ignacio López del Hierro, with whom she participated in the recruitment process as a confidant of Bárcenas' driver, Sergio Ríos.
Among the indications used against her are audios, Villarejo's agendas and the communication with the commissioner.
