The judge orders to investigate the 'corruption audios' of Villarejo

María Dolores de Cospedal, in the congressional commission on Operation Kitchen, on December 9, 2021. Andrea Comas

Manuel García-Castellón, judge of the National High Court, has ordered the Police to “analyze” the recordings of retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo published by EL PAÍS and other media, baptized as the

and that have affected different politicians.

Among them, María Dolores de Cospedal, former Secretary General of the PP and former Minister of Defense.

However, the magistrate has refused to re-indict the popular for Operation Kitchen.

The judge has thus ruled out the request of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which had asked him to call the former conservative leader under investigation again for his alleged participation in the maneuvers to spy on the former popular treasurer Luis Bárcenas and allegedly steal compromising documentation on high-ranking party officials.

The magistrate of

move after receiving the request from popular accusations to investigate the new audios published by EL PAÍS.

The judge then asked the Prosecutor's Office for its opinion, which responded with the request to open a new piece linked to the

and focused on whether members of the PP intervened in the police operation allegedly ordered by the Ministry of the Interior led by Jorge Fernández Díaz to hinder the

(the investigation into the illegal financing of the party) and steal evidence from Bárcenas.

Along these lines, the public ministry raised the option of charging Cospedal again, who was left out of the investigations in July 2021.

Anti-corruption has always maintained the thesis that Kitchen is part of a much broader plot.

According to the public accusation, the boycott of Gürtel from the PP lasted since 2009 and was promoted from the heart of the conservative party.

In fact, he has insistently pointed to the former general secretary.

However, García-Castellón rejected that theory and confined all responsibility to the Interior.

For this reason, in the summer of last year, he disqualified himself from politics and prosecuted Fernández Díaz;

his former

From him, Francisco Martínez, former Secretary of State for Security;

six commissioners, such as Eugenio Pino (Chief of Police with Rajoy) and José Manuel Villarejo;

and the driver of Bárcenas, Sergio Ríos.

That decision was confirmed in May 2022 by the Criminal Chamber.

Shortly after, the case suffered a new turn.

EL PAÍS published that same May some conversations recorded by Villarejo in the first half of 2013 with Cospedal.

In them, both talked about how to hinder the investigation into the

(accounting b of the PP).

"The little book [de Bárcenas]... it would be better to be able to stop it," the former popular leader is heard saying.

The PSOE, appearing as a popular accusation, then asked to reopen the judicial investigation into Kitchen: “Cospedal gives indications of what should be done and is informed [by Villarejo] of the steps being taken both with the press and with the police unit attached to the court so that names and paragraphs of the reports disappear”, the socialists stressed in their letter.

But Judge García-Castellón considers that there is no “new” evidence against Cospedal: “The [indictment] order is the result of a calm (and confirmed) assessment of all the existing investigative material, which ordered the proceeding with the case to its prosecution against the people with respect to whom there were indications of commission of the crime (as the Chamber came to agree).

This conviction came to rule out the claim of those who wanted to follow other lines of investigation in search of proving whether other crimes had been committed, ”he affirms this Tuesday in a car.

“The request that is now being made by the PSOE and the prosecutor is legitimate, but it was already ruled out in its day by this instructor.

Not because it was intended to close the procedure, but because it was found that there was no evidence to support the crimes that were intended to be investigated, "the judge emphasizes.

The magistrate insists that there are no indications that point to her former secretary general and that, in addition, the recordings published by EL PAÍS are not enough to call her back to testify as being investigated.

“The sustenance of the accusation is reduced almost nuclear to a few minutes of an audio cut whose origin is unknown, but also any circumstance and context.

On the basis of an affirmation made by Cospedal, the inference reached by the accusations is made,

a piece of audio

At the same time, the judge has opened this new line of investigation —called Separate Piece 34— where to put all the audios published by the press in recent months and on broadcast channels such as Telegram.

The magistrate orders the Police to collect these recordings: “The publication of information related to the present case that has been known to date requires, from the outset, a compilation and analysis task, in order to determine if the publications that have been appearing correspond to material apprehended and analyzed, or if it is new unknown data.

In this second case, he points out, it would be convenient to determine the relevance that it could have in the procedure”.