Luis Bárcenas, manager and treasurer of the PP during the terms of José María Aznar (1990-2004) and Mariano Rajoy (2004-2009), has spent more than six years in prison.
Firmly sentenced to 29 years for the
Gürtel case
—a corrupt plot that did business and bribed numerous public officials of administrations governed by the PP— and two more years for paying with money from his party's box b for the reform works of the main headquarters (Génova, 13), Bárcenas has achieved semi-liberty this week after spending more than half of the years of maximum compliance (12) that corresponded to him in prison.
When he first entered prison (in June 2013), the police launched a secret operation allegedly ordered by the Ministry of the Interior and without authorization from the judge to spy on the Bárcenas family with the aim of stealing documentation on the legal case opened by box b of the PP.
That illegal operation – Operation Kitchen – was paid for with public funds and executed by half a dozen commissioners, according to the judicial investigation.
Now the case is about to go to trial.
And Luis Barcenas, his wife, Rosalía Iglesias (who is still in prison, also convicted in the Gürtel case), and their son, Guillermo Bárcenas, have presented an indictment in which they request prison sentences for 11 people: eight policemen (the majority, commissioners), the family driver whom they captured as a confidant and the political leadership of the Interior: former minister Jorge Fernández Díaz and former Secretary of State Francisco Martínez.
He attributes numerous crimes to all of them, but the one that carries the most years in prison is embezzlement of public funds.
And the article of the Penal Code that the letter cites is 432.2, which punishes "those who, to the detriment of another, appropriate for themselves or for a third party money, effects, securities or any other movable thing that they have received in deposit,
commission or custody or that had been entrusted to them by virtue of any other title that produces the obligation to deliver or return them or deny having received them.
Bárcenas asks for six years in prison for this crime for those 11 people, the maximum sentence established by article 432.2 of the Penal Code.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has not yet presented its indictment.
Before doing so, it will analyze whether the legal reform recently approved by Parliament and which lowers the penalties for embezzlement without personal profit can benefit those involved in the
Kitchen case
.
The reform promoted by the Government at the request of ERC has been carried out with the aim of benefiting already convicted Catalan independentistas (who were already pardoned from prison and will now see their disqualification reduced) and those who are pending trial or fled from justice (who will see the years in prison for which they can be sentenced reduced).
But it will also apply to any other accused of non-profit embezzlement.
The defense of the ex-treasurer of the PP understands, and thus expresses it in the indictment, that the confidant was paid with public funds at a rate of 2,000 euros per month for two years and, therefore, there was a profit for third parties, something that continues being punished in the new Criminal Code with the same penalty as before the legal reform approved last Thursday.
But also, according to legal sources close to the investigation, the crimes were committed between 2013 and 2015, when the Criminal Code in force only punished embezzlement with personal or third-party gain with prison terms.
The current reform, which will enter into force on January 12, would be even more unfavorable, since it penalizes non-profit embezzlement with jail.
The letter presented at the end of October by the Bárcenas family lawyer recounts the alleged attacks suffered by the family between 2012 and 2015, when the fortune that the former treasurer hid in Switzerland (48 million euros) was uncovered and after revealing the newspaper EL COUNTRY the existence of a box b never declared to the Treasury or the Court of Accounts by the PP —eight million euros paid by contractor companies between 1990 and 2009— controlled by Luis Bárcenas and his direct boss in the party, Álvaro Lapuerta, now deceased .
"Between 2012 and 2015," the letter states, "[the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior] orchestrated an illegal parapolice operation in order to obtain and destroy any information that [the Bárcenas family] had in their possession that could affect the Popular Party and that it could use in the Gürtel procedure whose instruction was followed in the National Court”.
Bárcenas places the beginning of the police maneuvers against him and his family in February 2013, after the publication of the secret accounting of the PP in EL PAÍS.
The ex-treasurer defines this documentation as "an extra-accounting accounting of the PP that could greatly harm the political party."
The letter details the details of the police operation and the Interior maneuvers against Bárcenas during those years.
Abuse of ministry functions.
Bárcenas accuses Jorge Fernández Díaz, then Minister of the Interior of the PP Government, and his Secretary of State for Security, Francisco Martínez, of launching, "with knowledge of its illegality and clear abuse of functions, an operation aimed at obtaining of information and documentation held by the former treasurer and his family in order to illegally remove said material from the judge who was investigating the Gürtel case.”
The secret operation, according to the judicial investigation, involved half a dozen commissioners and involved a cost of 50,000 euros from the reserved funds, to pay Sergio Ríos, driver of the Bárcenas family, who became a mole for the police to find the secrets that the ex-treasurer of the PP could keep.
In addition, dozens of police officers participated in the follow-up operation, without knowing the objective of their mission.
Cloning of mobile phones and tablets.
The letter indicates that the driver Sergio Ríos managed to copy the content of mobile phones and tablets owned by the former PP treasurer for the Ministry of the Interior.
That information was never made available to the courts, until an investigation into this case was opened many years later.
Robbery in a chest with a double bottom in the workshop of Rosalía Iglesias.
Bárcenas also accuses Interior of illegally entering a furniture restoration workshop where his wife worked to "remove documentation from a chest with a double bottom."
This documentation, with hardly any relevance, ended up being published in the press under the name "Rosalía's papers" long before they reached the judge who was investigating the facts.
The assault on the home of the false priest.
The former PP treasurer recounts the violent episode of the assault on his home by a man disguised as a priest in October 2013. Enrique Olivares tied Rosalía Iglesias and her son Guillermo at gunpoint inside their home, with the alleged objective of obtaining relevant documentation that both kept to "end the government of the nation."
The false priest was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2014. He died eight years later.
Despite Bárcenas's suspicions, it was never possible to prove the link of that man with the operation of the Ministry of the Interior.
Unjustified harassment in prison.
Bárcenas recounts the multiple incidents he suffered during his stay in preventive detention, between 2013 and 2015. He was classified as a FIES (Special Monitoring Inmate File) and he argues that he did not meet any of the requirements: being especially conflictive and dangerous;
belonging to armed or organized crime organizations;
being a member of the State Security Forces or being linked to international crime.
The ex-treasurer of the PP recounts that he never wanted to be transferred to a respect module in the prison and that he was watched by different inmates who allegedly collaborated with the Interior parapolice team through Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo.
After being released for three years, Barcenas was sentenced by the National Court in May 2018 and returned to prison,
already to serve sentence.
A few days later, the socialist Pedro Sánchez won a vote of no confidence against Rajoy and was sworn in as Prime Minister.
Since then, the former PP treasurer "has not suffered anything similar to what has been reported" during his first stay in provisional prison.