Villarejo's audios undress the PP

A super-police officer, author of some of the most notorious police successes of the late 20th century, now retired, calls the undercover agent José Manuel Villarejo on March 10, 2015. That day, EL PAÍS reveals that Villarejo has a suspicious patrimony: 12 companies and 16 million euros of capital.

"I'm calling to give you a hug."

Be careful with the envious and traitors, don't let them throw you away.

Villarejo appreciates the advice and tells the star supercop that the news in EL PAÍS is the result of anger from the CNI: “They are angry with the Royal House because Corinna [Larsen, former lover of the king] contacts me because she is fed up with threats and all that history… And it's not my fault that everyone comes looking for me… even though people pay little afterwards”.

The conversation, like almost all in Villarejo's professional life, ends up recorded by himself and is part of the sound material that the police seized from his home when he was arrested in November 2017.

“I believe in reincarnation.

Everyone has told me: “To the death and don't worry”.

From the minister to the secretary of state.

They cannot betray me.

Let's do some research...

Everything that Villarejo tells the retired police officer comes true.

The Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, commissions an internal investigation into Villarejo's assets, which concludes by reaffirming his innocence: all the commissioner's businesses are family and compatible with his police work.

Although multiple crimes are hidden behind this business tangle, as reported two years later by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, Villarejo emerges unscathed from that internal investigation — “paripé”, according to him — and continues his life without detaching himself from power.

That recorded conversation reveals that the Ministry of the Interior turned a blind eye to protect the commissioner who exercised the most power and influence over the PP government.

But so far, no one has heard such resounding evidence of the scandal.

More information

The secret audio videos of corruption: a journey through the police sewers

The secret audios of corruption, taken from the conversations that Villarejo recorded and published by EL PAÍS in the last week, uncover some hidden keys until now of dark episodes in the history of Spain and add seriousness to the legal cases opened against the PP, many of them still alive in the courts.

The popular accusation carried out by the PSOE in the

, police espionage without judicial authorization on the family of the former treasurer of the PP, Luis Bárcenas, requested last Friday the opening of the case after listening to some of Villarejo's conversations with which he was during 10 years general secretary of the PP.

We can aim to do the same this week.

Leaders of the old and new PP, a party surrounded by corruption and with a dozen cases still pending trial, have expressed their concern to this newspaper about the new audios that EL PAÍS has made public.

Obstruction of justice.

"The notebook".

The commissioner recorded his adventures during the last 20 years of his professional life.

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office sets the beginning of Villarejo's criminal record in 2004. The known secret audios have now aggravated the shadow of suspicion that the PP has carried since the

, an extensive network of corruption that colonized numerous administrations governed by the conservative formation.

That case has been destroying the prestige of the PP for 12 years, has removed dozens of corrupt party leaders from politics and triggered the motion of censure that evicted the PP from the Government of the nation in 2018. The secrets that the commissioner kept in dozens of hard drives with thousands of recordings and documents now offer some clues to the events investigated by the courts.

The former president of Castilla-La Mancha, former Minister of Defense and former Secretary General of the PP, Dolores de Cospedal, began her relationship with Villarejo in the summer of 2009, just a few months after the

.

She was a close friend of her husband, who introduced her to the heart of the PP's power.

The commissioner then told the couple some details of the investigation and boasted of his efforts to prevent further damage to the conservative formation.

During the years of investigation of that case, the PP tried to hinder the investigation in different ways.

The conversations that EL PAÍS has now published underpin those facts.

Cospedal desperately searched for the "little book" where Bárcenas recorded the inflows and outflows of money from the PP's box b —almost eight million in almost 20 years—, and tried to stop its publication with the help of Villarejo.

In addition, she conspired with the commissioner so that the police reports that reached the judge about the Bárcenas papers were previously softened to avoid serious accusations against the leadership of the PP.

The investigating judge in the

ruled months ago that Cospedal's meetings with Villarejo did not deserve any criminal reproach and shelved the open case against her.

In light of the new known conversations between the commissioner and the then general secretary of the PP, the PSOE has sent a letter to the court stating: "As aware of the illegal practices carried out by commissioner Villarejo, Mrs. Cospedal could not ignore the obligation to report such serious crimes that affect the credibility and professionalism of the State Security Corps and Forces.

Since she has not done so, her intention to obtain information on the progress of the investigation of

and about the gossip to obstruct the action of justice”.

"The cook gets the police and we have fish for him."

The driver who put the PP to Luis Bárcenas and his family ended up being a confidant in exchange for 2,000 euros a month of reserved funds from the Ministry of the Interior.

His task was to find out where Bárcenas hid documents or evidence of the illegal financing of the PP and inform the police leadership who launched a plan to steal that documentation and prevent it from reaching the judge investigating the case.

Villarejo captured that confidant, whom he nicknamed "the cook" because his name coincided with that of a famous cook.

The commissioner usually spoke with the Secretary of State for Security, Francisco Martínez, to inform him of some matters that interested the Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz.

That custom had its origin in the order that, according to Martínez, the minister gave him since he arrived at the Interior.

In a conversation from 2014, Villarejo and Martínez reflect on the danger that the informer will ever tell about this special job, without the judge's knowledge, which they have commissioned and paid for with reserved funds.

Commissioner Villarejo.

The cook is 39 years old.

In order to close everything and such, this guy, if there are some competitions for basic police and he becomes a police officer, we have him fished forever because he would already be a police officer...

Martínez (

interior

And he wants?

Villarejo.

I can convince you.

Don't you think?

It's just that... Once you're a police officer you're never going to win.

Martinez.

It's a good idea.

The informant in the

ended up passing the police exams at a more than suspicious age.

Martínez disassociated himself from this process when the judge asked him.

The recording clarifies how the Secretary of State for Security was aware of a plan executed without the knowledge of the judge who was investigating the case of box b of the PP;

that he knew the danger that the informant might one day tell what had happened and that he supported the idea of ​​making him a police officer to avoid the risk that he might confess to his unspeakable work.

A judicial favor to avoid political ostracism.

Esperanza Aguirre, received with applause last Friday at the PP congress in Madrid and honored in almost all the speeches, spoke in November 2014 with Commissioner Villarejo in the presence of José Luis González Armengol, who had been senior judge up to four months before of Plaza de Castilla.

In that conversation, recorded by Villarejo, a plan was drawn up so that the judicial process opened against Aguirre for disobedience – she fled from the municipal police when she was fined for parking in a bus lane on Madrid's Gran Vía – ended quickly and filed.

Aguirre achieved his objective because Villarejo, who exercised the popular accusation, withdrew from the process to do him a favor and comply with what Armengol had also asked of him.

After learning about the content of the conversation through this newspaper, Aguirre tried to deny the facts —”I never asked Villarejo to stop asking for inquiries”— and went so far as to say that he did not even know what inquiries were.

Aguirre has a law degree and in that conversation in 2014, a few months before the municipal elections where she was able to present herself as a mayoral candidate for the PP, she disqualified the entire hard core of her governments and her party in the Community of Madrid (the vice presidents Alfredo Prada and Ignacio González, and the former director Francisco Granados);

she called former minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón a “bad person”, who won two elections for regional president and another two for mayor of Madrid by an absolute majority;

she crushed the main national leaders of the PP (Mariano Rajoy or Javier Arenas,

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid and the PP of Madrid, did not say anything last Friday when they asked her about Aguirre with a strange excuse: "I do not share knowing audios of people who have been recorded and who do not know it".

Some of those mentioned in that conversation are studying possible legal actions against Aguirre.

The 'Operation Catalonia' that did not prevent the independence challenge.

The patriotic police - commissioners who worked for the Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, between 2012 and 2016, in obscure maneuvers without judicial backing to discredit the political opponents of the Government, such as the Catalan independence supporters or leaders of Podemos - worked hard to deactivate the secessionist movement in Catalonia promoted by the Generalitat.

The first known action, now confirmed by the secret audios of Villarejo's recordings, consisted of a work of intoxication through certain communication media through the preparation of reports based on live judicial processes, such as the

, but where they were detailed , without evidence, illegal businesses and current accounts in Switzerland of the main pro-independence leaders.

With this defective informative material —many of the facts exposed in the reports were never accredited—, the pressure on the politicians who supported the break with Spain was very intense since November 2012, in the middle of the Catalan electoral campaign.

CiU, the hegemonic party in Catalonia, lost 12 seats in those elections dominated by news about the corruption of the pro-independence leaders.

In the material recorded by Villarejo in those months there is multiple evidence of police efforts to entangle against the Catalan independence movement.

Despite all the police operations that were launched at the time, some of them successful, such as the one that uncovered the hidden fortune of the Pujols in Andorra, the Catalan independence movement was not only not deactivated but also consolidated over time to the point of forcing holding an illegal self-determination referendum on October 1, 2017.

Cobo, about Aguirre: "Few people can record a conversation in which there is so much pettiness, meanness and lies"

The one who was second to Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón in the Madrid mayor's office, Manuel Cobo, has charged the former president of the capital, Esperanza Aguirre, for the audios published by EL PAÍS that include his meeting with the former Police Commissioner, José Manuel Villarejo and the former senior judge of Plaza Castilla.

"They defame my party and they defame democracy," said Cobo, who considers the meeting to be "the pure operation of a mobster."

Aguirre charged in her talk with the former commissioner against Gallardón for being "a bad person", in addition to commenting on aspects of her private life and that of other prominent members of the PP.

"I would tell Esperanza Aguirre to look in the mirror to see if she sees a bad person and if she realizes that people have seen how she is with this recording."

Cobo has been incredulous with the justifications that the former president has given before the publication of her meeting with the former police officer.

“She is a liar”, the former deputy mayor of Madrid has affirmed for the explanations of the former president, who, in his meeting with Villarejo, admitted corrupt behavior by his former vice president Alfredo Prada and his former secretary general, Francisco Granados, and has assured that he made these statements to “make the ball” to the ex-policeman.

In addition to criticizing Gallardón, Villarejo also insulted Cobo during the meeting, to which the former mayor also responded: “I feel very comfortable hearing Villarejo speak disparagingly of me.

I think he puts things in his place.

I am delighted that she [Esperanza Aguirre] admires her and despises me”.

During the meeting, the former regional leader also denied that she ordered the espionage on Cobo and Prada, for which four members of the Aguirre Executive were charged: three former civil guards who were advisers to Granados and the former director general of Security, Sergio Gamón.

The plot of monitoring was described as a 'gestapillo' by the deputy mayor himself, although it was never proven that it was the former president who directed said surveillance.

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