The Secretary of State for Security during the Government of Mariano Rajoy denied this Tuesday in the National Court that he pressured Luis Bárcenas' lawyer to prevent the former treasurer of the PP from disseminating more information about the party's corruption.
Francisco Martínez, who has declared himself under investigation before Judge Manuel García-Castellón in the case in which the alleged pressure received by the lawyer Javier Gómez de Liaño is being investigated, has assured that he neither pressured the lawyer nor did anyone linked to the PP order him to did it.
According to legal sources, he has also denied having had any type of dealings with Bárcenas or with his lawyer between 2013 and 2015. Commissioner Eugenio Pino, former Deputy Operational Director (DAO) of the National Police, has also appeared as an investigator and has only accepted to answer the questions of his defense, but the latter has not asked him any questions.
Nor has the judge, to whom Pino, according to the sources consulted, had also agreed to answer.
García-Castellón summoned Martínez and Pino last January at the request of Gómez de Liaño himself, who is prosecuting the case, and with the support of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.
The judge took this step after receiving two reports from the National Police that detail the existence of at least nine entries in the handwritten diaries of retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo that indicate that both allegedly knew about the pressure on the lawyer.
The investigations into these pressures, which form part 36 of the macro summary of the
Tándem case
in which the parapolice plot around Villarejo is investigated, had been archived by the judge, but the National Court ordered him to reopen it in February of last year.
In the resolution in which he charged the former number two of the Interior and the former head of the Police, the judge pointed out several notes from the agendas in which Villarejo recorded his efforts to compile information about an alleged irregular payment of more than five million euros. that Gómez de Liaño would have received from the leader of the Russian mafia Zakhar Kalashov, for whom he was also a lawyer.
The objective of these notes was, supposedly, to pressure the lawyer so that Bárcenas continued revealing information about the PP.
Martínez has rejected these accusations and has only admitted to knowing who Kalashov was through hearsay.
In his statement, in which he has only agreed to answer his lawyer and Gómez de Liaño's lawyer, Martínez has denied being
Chisco
, the alias that Villarejo used to refer to him in his agenda and which is key to sustain his accusation.
This statement by the former number two of the Interior contradicts the conclusions reached by the Police throughout the investigation and which is reflected in a new report sent to the judge dated last Friday.
In that 16-page document, Internal Affairs analyzes
all the notes made by Villarejo in his diaries and personal diaries in which he alludes to Chisco and compares them with other documents included in the case, among them, one in which the commissioner himself links the nicknames he usually uses with telephone numbers.
The one assigned to
Chisco
is the telephone number associated with Martínez in the first notes and, according to police databases, the owner was the Ministry of the Interior.
The Police report explains how Villarejo's first notes refer to the then number two of the Interior as “Fco Martínez” and then there is a “transition” of “Fco MI, Chisco Ml and from there to Chisco.”
In these notes, along with these aliases, Villarejo points out observations and data that, according to the Police, “evidence Chisco's connection with the Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State for Security since 2013.”
In the last notes, from November 2016, Villarejo records Chisco's “bad perspectives” on his political future.
On November 16, after a conversation with him, the commissioner writes: “Very disappointed in everyone.
Especially against Rajoy.
Looking for an office to leave.
“Full support for Jorge [supposedly, Fernández Díaz, the then Minister of the Interior].”
Two days later, Martínez was dismissed as Secretary of State for Security.
The judge's order for which he was charged cited eight notes dated between October 7, 2013 and August 21 of the following year, in which reference is made to alleged meetings between Villarejo and Chisco.
In them, according to the police, they had tried to “micro G. Liaño.
Operation Kalasov” or “proposes taking steps to see if Liaño traveled to Uruguay these days.”
In the case of Pino, who appears as Pin
in Villarejo's handwritten diaries
, there is an entry from April 24, 2014 with a succession of names and initials, including “LB” [Luis Bárcenas] and “Liaño.”
Martínez and Pino are already prosecuted in another piece of the same summary, that of the so-called
Kitchen case
, in which the illegal espionage of Bárcenas by the alleged parapolice plot to snatch compromising documents from PP leaders for the collection of bonuses is being investigated. .
Former Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, a trusted man of former President Rajoy, is also being prosecuted for this plot;
Villarejo himself and several commissioners and agents of the National Police.
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