Banker, drug dealer, art dealer, friend of Saudi royalty, accused of fraud... and confidant in the Catalonia operation.
A man with a thousand faces, José María Clemente Marcet, a Catalan financier who worked for years in Andorra and Switzerland, is one of the most enigmatic characters in José Manuel Villarejo's orbit. The shady business of both in the Dominican Republic is the focus of piece 31 of Tandem, the macro-cause on the former commissioner at the National Court. Clemente's name, however, has gone unnoticed in connection with the Catalunya operation.
Cross-analysis of the commissioner's meticulous diaries and recordings, as well as various interviews with people close to Clemente, suggest that he used his contacts in the Swiss and Andorran banks to sell information at the start of the operation. Villarejo's notes suggest that he collected from reserved state funds. It was his cover.
On November 17, 2012, two weeks before the elections called by Artur Mas, a headline impacted the Catalan campaign: "The Pujols have 137 million in Geneva." Based on an alleged draft of the economic and fiscal crime unit (UDEF), El Mundo disseminates the discovery of a hidden foundation in the Swiss bank Lombard Odier. The information – which was never proven and from which the UDEF disassociated itself – is the first bombing of the secret operation.
Three days before, Villarejo informed Francisco Martínez, chief of staff of the Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, that he has "deadly" information for the former president Jordi Pujol, supplied by the Barcelona businessman Javier de la Rosa: "He told me where It has a foundation, of around 150 million euros”.
Villarejo lies. He uses De la Rosa as a screen to hide the true source of that fabrication, José María Clemente. This is revealed by the recordings of the two appointments that the commissioner had with De La Rosa on November 10 in Barcelona. De la Rosa asks for money and offers a nebula of data on politicians and businessmen related to CiU. He talks about a supposed Pujol account, opened in Lombard Odier years ago. But it is Villarejo who mentions the supposed foundation and the reaction of his interlocutor denotes his ignorance. The commissioner shows him documents while he comments: "Lombard... a foundation (...) Now they have a foundation with a Roman name." "Didn't they tell you about Canonica, the law firm?" De La Rosa responds, puzzled.
The diaries suggest the foundation's lead stems from Clemente. On November 10, the same day that Villarejo meets De la Rosa and Jordi Pujol Ferrusola's ex-girlfriend, Victoria Álvarez, he also has a discreet meeting with Clemente. He draws up a list of Catalan politicians and businessmen (the Sumarroca family, Carles Vilarrubí, Felip Puig, Josep Antoni Duran Lleida...) and Andorran and Swiss banks. And Villarejo points out: "Foundation uses Latin name (Imperium)". Later, in the conversation with Francisco Martínez, the commissioner mentions to a "friendly banker" that he must obtain the forms of the account statement in Lombard, for 30,000 euros. Are you referring to Clemente?
He is one of the first people to activate Villarejo for the Catalonia operation. He calls you just six days after receiving the order. They meet on October 26, 2012 and the next day, he notes: “Clone [code name for Clemente]: message from M. Interior. Prepare reserve expenses.”(sic). The financier supplies contacts for at least a month. In mid-December, his trace fades in the agendas in relation to this matter, although he continues to have deals with Villarejo.
Unlike De la Rosa and Álvarez, who have been publicly exposed as sources of the operation, Clemente has remained in the shadows. They are different profiles, but all three have something in common: they need money.
Clemente is an old acquaintance of Villarejo, with whom he has had dark business since at least 2006. He is also someone who owes him a favor, and no less: the commissioner helped him escape justice, according to what they allow to reconstruct their agendas. Clemente has a dead body in the closet. A five-year prison sentence for drug trafficking in France, imposed by a court of first instance in 2007 and ratified by the Court of Cassation in 2014.
It all goes back to 1999, when he participated in a trafficking operation involving 2,000 kilos of cocaine, sent from Caracas to Paris on the jet of a Saudi prince, Nayef al Shaalan. Two Colombian drug traffickers, who are collaborating with the US justice system to reduce their sentences, point to Clemente, then living in Switzerland, as his launderer. The details are collected in Nuestro hombre en la DEA (Planeta, 2007), by journalist Gerardo Reyes, head of investigation for Univision, who covered the trial in Miami.
In 2002, under the crosshairs of American, French, Swiss and Andorran justice, Clemente was arrested in Barcelona and spent a year in pretrial detention. Spain rejects a request for extradition to the US, while the National Court opens two cases against him, one in 2003 and the other in 2004, for money laundering and drug trafficking, which Baltasar Garzón instructs.
The two end up archived, in 2007 and 2008. It is not clear if Villarejo plays a role, but his agendas at the time, as El Periódico de España revealed, include the maneuvers by the commissioner and his police collaborators, the then head of the UDEF, José Luis Olivera, and the head of the Central Operational Support Unit, Enrique García Castaño, for Garzón to archive. Garzón is today García Castaño's lawyer. The then chief anti-drug prosecutor, Javier Zaragoza, declined to give details about the case. Neither did Clemente, contacted through his lawyer, want to attend this newspaper.
While helping him in court, Villarejo does business with Clemente. Some are under the magnifying glass of the National Court. In 2008, there is a transfer of assets between a Clemente company and another of the ex-commissioner, through a debt recognition of 1.2 million euros. The prosecution also believes that Villarejo helped Clemente launder three million in another operation. In 2006, a company belonging to Rafael Redondo, the commissioner's main partner, bought him some land in La Barraca de La Romana, in the Dominican Republic. In 2010, the actual owner was still Clemente. In the Book of Kings, it is explained that one of the Colombian drug traffickers had a villa in La Romana.
The agendas indicate that the Villarejo clique was informing Prince Nayef of the coke plane of their steps to close the Clemente case, someone well connected in his country as he is related to the Defense Minister. Was the friendship with Nayef Clemente's great asset to avoid jail? In the summer of 2007 – already sentenced in absentia in France – Villarejo traveled to Riyadh with the leadership of the Interior, then under the socialist Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. The Público newspaper obtained the letter of invitation to the Spanish delegation. It is signed by Prince Saud al Shaalan, Nayef's twin brother. Clemente and Villarejo appear as "responsible for information relations."
At the end of 2014, Villarejo returns there with Clemente. "Saud, Nayef. Magnificent reception on foot from the plane ”, writes the commissioner. Clemente travels without incident despite the fact that two weeks before, France has confirmed his conviction. "Without problems to leave," says Villarejo.
It is significant that Clemente's fall coincides exactly with Villarejo's retirement. On July 26, 2016, he is arrested on a trip to Lebanon. "Clon is being held by an Interpol Spain order from 2003 that he does not know if it is up to date," he notes. He already has little he can do for his partner. Confronted with the head of Internal Affairs, Marcelino Martín Blas, who has uncovered his corrupt business, he retires on August 4.
La Vanguardia has spoken with someone who followed the case in Lebanon, who argues that Clemente's arrest could be a signal sent to Villarejo by his enemies. Why does an old Spanish arrest warrant jump? Is it because Lebanon stores expired orders or because someone in Spain reactivates it? In any case, when the Lebanese police contact the Spanish police, they do not limit themselves to saying that Clemente has no pending cases in Spain, but rather points out that he is wanted by France, reads a fax obtained by this newspaper.
Villarejo tries to help him. He even sends a person he trusts to see him in the Lebanese jail, the businessman Armando Mateo Flandorfer, investigated in the Pit piece of the Tandem case. For nothing. Clement is extradited and sent to the Parisian prison of Fleury-Mérogis. He contacts Villarejo to get him transferred to a Spanish jail. “Clon continues to insist that he has very good data of police interest,” he wrote in September 2017. “Clon called regretting that he still cannot leave France. I give him encouragement ”, he adds in October. It's his last note about him. On November 3, Villarejo is arrested.
The allusion to "good data of police interest" is not trivial. It probably reflects the bargaining chip with which Clemente had managed to escape justice until then. Among his circle he said that he worked for the FBI. Villarejo's diaries, in fact, are full of allusions to the links of his partner with the FBI and the interest that these arouse among Spanish police chiefs. Before the trip to Lebanon that will turn out so badly, Villarejo points out: “Clone. He says that he is going to make an issue with the FBI to arrest a subject who owes (stole) 500 m. According to him, 10% (50) corresponds to him and he wants to offer me 15% of that”.
One of the people with whom Villarejo discusses Clemente's situation in Beirut is Marc L. Varri, the FBI attaché at the US embassy in Madrid. Varri is one of those sued by the former president of Barça Sandro Rosell and his name also appears related to the alleged plot against Banca Privada d'Andorra. Sources familiar with what happened in Lebanon have explained to this newspaper that Varri made arrangements for France to renounce extradition but that his superiors in the US did not endorse it.
Clemente was released from prison in 2019. Several sources currently place him in Madrid.
