Commissioner Andrés Gómez Gordo, who was an advisor to María Dolores de Cospedal in the Government of Castilla-La Mancha, and for whom the Prosecutor's Office is requesting 15 years in prison for his participation in Operation Kitchen, has defended that he complied with “the instructions of his hierarchical superiors, with the absolute conviction that he was facing a totally legal police operation and about which he lacked any information.”
Gómez Gordo, who has presented his defense brief to the National Court to which Efe has had access, is credited with having intervened in the recruitment of the confidant Sergio Ríos, also accused, something that the defense flatly denies and assures that the commissioner “never” received information or documentation from him.
The Prosecutor's Office believes that Sergio Ríos, in exchange for his work as a confidant, received 54,000 euros of the reserved funds and the promise of joining the Police, something that finally happened.
Gómez Gordo limits his actions “to a neutral and specific event”—“putting Ríos in contact” with Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo after “being requested by his superiors”—he declares himself “completely unrelated” to his selection process to enter the Police and justifies that he paid Ríos three times as Eugenio Pino ordered him to do so in his capacity as DAO; Before, he says, Villarejo did it.
However, Gómez Gordo denies that he had a position “within the Police organizational chart that allowed him to infer that the operation was irregular” or that he could be committing a crime, “quite the opposite.”
For his part, the number two of the Police with the PP Government Eugenio Pino has defended that what is known as Operation Kitchen was “legal” and responded to the “lawful, pertinent and necessary police interest” in investigating alleged crimes of the party's former treasurer Luis Bárcenas, and has denied that he ordered the theft of documents.
Eugenio Pino, in his defense brief, denies having committed any crime regarding this operation, which the Prosecutor's Office considers “illegal” and believes that it was concocted by the Ministry of the Interior in 2013 to spy on Bárcenas and his family and steal related documents from them. with the
Gürtel case.
Anti-corruption, which also accuses the former Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Díaz in this case, maintains that Kitchen's objective was to obtain information and evidence "that could be incriminating" for the PP or its "top leaders" and prevent it from reaching the hands of the judge. .
Facts that the former deputy operational director (DAO) of the Police, for whom the Prosecutor's Office is asking for 15 years in prison, denies considering that there is "not the slightest indication" that he ordered or authorized the removal of said documentation, while defending the “legality” of police action from its “origin.”
His lawyer alludes to the "lawful" police interest in investigating allegedly criminal acts, "beyond an open judicial investigation and without prejudice to a subsequent incorporation into it of the result of a previous autonomous police activity." And remember that Commissioner Enrique García Castaño also alleged the legality of the police investigations into “an alleged transfer of assets” from Bárcenas to foreign accounts, and that all the accused, except José Manuel Villarejo, have maintained that the actions of Operation Kitchen “responded to legitimate reasons of police interest.”
He also rejects that he ordered these two commissioners to capture a police collaborator – Sergio Ríos, Bárcenas' driver – “for a spurious purpose”; He says that it was Villarejo who “controlled” him and rejects the illegal nature of this figure, while defending the “verbal authorization of payment with reserved funds” for his expenses and needs, something, he specifies, “usual.”