The former Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Díaz will sit in the dock as the ringleader of the espionage plot against former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas, facing a sentence of 15 years in prison and 33 years of disqualification, as requested by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor in the Kitchen case.
The same request that Anti-Corruption asks for the rest of what was the leadership of the Interior during one of its darkest stages: the former number two of the Ministry, Francisco Martínez, and the former assistant director of operations (DAO) of the National Police, Eugenio Pino.
The three are accused of the crimes of concealment, embezzlement and against privacy for concocting a plan with which to steal compromising information for the Popular Party that was in the power of the former treasurer of the party.
The indictment presented by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, to which La Vanguardia has had access, reserves the largest of the requests for sentences for the retired former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, epicenter of the plot that is being investigated in the National Court. For him, who is pending sentencing for his first three trials in the Tandem case, the Public Ministry requests 19 years in prison and 33 years of disqualification for concealment, embezzlement, crimes against privacy and own passive bribery.
For the mole of the espionage plot, Sergio Ríos, who was Luis Bárcenas' driver for years, Anticorruption asks for 12 and a half years in prison and 13 years of disqualification.
For Andrés Gómez Gordo, a person at the time very close to the former general secretary of the Popular Party, María Dolores de Cospedal, the Public Ministry also requests 15 years in prison and 58 of absolute disqualification for concealment, embezzlement and crimes against privacy, while that for former commissioner Enrique García Castaño, Anticorruption requests 12 and a half years in prison and 28 years of disqualification for the same string of crimes.
Finally, for those investigated José Luis Olivera, José Ángel Fuentes Gago and Bonifacio Díaz, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor requests that the case be dismissed.
In the indictment, Anticorruption determines that in mid-2013 the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior devised an "illegal police intelligence operation" aimed at obtaining information that could be incriminating for the Popular Party and its top leaders that could be found in their possession. of Luis Bárcenas, once the National Court was already investigating the famous Bárcenas Papers.
To carry out the operation, the most powerful uniformed commander in the National Police, Deputy Director of Operations Eugenio Pino contacted the former treasurer's driver, who had the "absolute confidence" of the Bárcenas family.
“From his initial position as driver, the defendant Sergio Ríos not only had great knowledge of his movements and activities, but also, by virtue of the trust that the Bárcenas family had placed in him, he made private efforts for his son and of his wife", the indictment states. For the recruitment, according to the Prosecutor's Office, the intervention of Gómez Gordo, alias Cospedín, was necessary. Once captured, the mole of the plot agreed to meet with the police officers in the plot, knowing that information was intended to be stolen.
Between July 2013 and September 2015, Ríos proceeded to "exhaustively and individually inform" Gómez Gordo, Villarejo and García Castaño "about the appointments or meetings" held by Bárcenas -while he was free- and his wife Iglesias, " about the content and interlocutors of the conversations that they had and that he had the opportunity to listen to and even about the mental situation in which they found themselves, also providing them with a copy of the documents and effects that he carried on request”.
As consideration for the information and documentation provided, Ríos received, among other payments, the amount of 2,000 euros per month, paid from the reserved funds of the Ministry of the Interior.
According to the Prosecutor's Office, the information that Ríos was obtaining was initially transmitted to Villarejo, García Castaño and Gómez Gordo, who in turn transferred it to Pino and Martínez so that they could finally report it to the head of the Ministry of the Interior. of the time, Jorge Fernández Díaz.
In parallel, the espionage plot agreed to launch surveillance of the Bárcenas family in which numerous police officers even participated. The purpose, as stated by Anticorruption, would be to know the places where the family "could hide cash or documentation." Any type of information that "in the case of being compromising for the Popular Party and its leaders" could come to the knowledge of the National Court that was instructing the case against the popular at that time. The Prosecutor's Office recounts how UCAO agents, who were unaware of the illegal nature of the operation in which they were participating, managed to place a recording camera in the office of one of Bárcenas' lawyers.
The Prosecutor's Office includes in its brief that Ríos gave García Castaño two mobile phones and a tablet that Bárcenas had kept at his home. With the devices in their possession, the defendants Ríos and García Castaño went to a cafeteria where they proceeded to dump their contents into a memory stick. Specifically, they extracted numerous text messages and emails that Bárcenas had exchanged with different interlocutors, as well as the contacts that he had stored in them. García Castaño recognized both the dumping of the devices and the delivery of the information obtained to Francisco Martínez, former number two of the Interior.
