Former PP secretary general María Dolores de Cospedal (right) before appearing before the Kitchen commission in Congress on December 9, 2021.Andrea Comas
The new parliamentary commission of inquiry into the sewers of the Ministry of the Interior in the stage of the governments of Mariano Rajoy has agreed on Wednesday the names of the 20 comparecientes, mostly politicians and police, who must go from June 14 until the end of October to Congress to try to shed some more light on the parapolice plot that operated in the stage of Jorge Fernández Díaz to the In front of the apartment. In the agreed list there are notable absences, such as that of the former president of the Government, that of the founder of Podemos Pablo Iglesias or that of the former president of the Generalitat Jordi Pujol. The PSOE voted against the attendance of all of them.
Yes, the former ministers of the PP María Dolores de Cospedal and Fernández Díaz himself, who already did it in previous investigation commissions, as well as the dome of the Interior in the stage of the latter, including the former Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martínez and the former director general of the Police Ignacio Cosidó. Several journalists whose presence Unidas Podemos demanded have not been included in the list of participants either.
The work of the commission began last week with the appearance of retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, who, again, did not provide any new or relevant information about the sewers of the State and the so-called Operation Catalonia, mounted in 2012 during the governments of Mariano Rajoy to, through a campaign of information poisoning with alleged police reports loaded with serious accusations of corruption, discredit the main Catalan secessionist leaders. The Andorran banker Higini Cierco was also scheduled to attend, but was delayed at his request. They were the only two appearances agreed by the parties at the beginning of the work of the commission before the difficulties of the parties to agree on the rest of the names.
This Wednesday, the commission met again to set the calendar of the work – they will resume on June 14, after the municipal and regional elections, and will continue in July, September and October – and, above all, agree on 20 names of participants. On the table, the groups have worked with 40 names, of which those who, in principle, were only supported by one party have fallen (those finally agreed had the support of at least two formations).
Thus, among the first 10 who will appear will be, in addition to Fernández Díaz and Cospedal, former Secretary of State Francisco Martínez and commissioners Marcelino Martín Blas ―who was head of the Internal Affairs Unit of the Police―; the highest uniformed officer of the National Police in those years, the also retired commissioner Eugenio Pino; the former director general Ignacio Cosidó and the policemen Bonifacio Díaz Sevillano (indicated as an alleged member of the political brigade), Celestino Barroso (who was attaché of Interior in the embassy of Spain in Andorra) and Narciso Ortega (former superior chief of Police in Catalonia). They are joined by Agustí Carles Garau, president of the entity Drets. Many of them, such as Fernández Díaz, Cospedal, Martínez, Martín Blas, Pino, Cosido and Díaz Sevillano, already appeared in the previous parliamentary commission of inquiry into the patriotic police.
In the next 10 comparecientes there are also quite a few policemen, such as Chief Inspector José Ángel Fuentes Gago, who was Pino's right-hand man, or Commissioner Enrique García Castaño, who in his previous appearance in Congress provided numerous information, although predictably this time he will not attend because he suffers a serious illness. Commissioners Enrique Barón (former head of the fight against terrorism of the National Police), José García Losada (who occupied the General Commissariat of the Judicial Police, under which the UDEF acted in corruption cases), José Luis Olivera (former head of this anti-corruption unit) and Agustín Castro, former head of the Police in Catalonia, have also been cited.
They will be joined by Colonel Manuel Sánchez Corbí, former head of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard who was dismissed by Minister Grande-Marlaska in 2018; police officer Antonio Giménez Raso; the director of the Executive Service of the Commission for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Monetary Offences (Sepblac), Juan Manuel Vega Serrano; and the former director of the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia, Daniel de Alfonso, who already had to appear in Congress in 2017 after a conversation between him and Minister Fernández Díaz was leaked.
Left out of the list have been journalists such as Antonio García Ferreras, the PP politician Alicia Sánchez Camacho, the major of the Mossos Josep Lluís Trapero, Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos (whose cessation as head of the Civil Guard in Madrid has been annulled by the Supreme Court), the former director general of the Civil Guard María Gámez and the former Minister of Justice and Interior of the PSOE Juan Alberto Belloch.
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