The former general secretary of the PP María Dolores de Cospedal has denied today before the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón that she requested information from the former Police Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo to pressure Luis Bárcenas' lawyer, according to sources present at the interrogation.
This was maintained during his interrogation as a witness, after the summons of the investigator in the piece of the tandem operation that investigates the alleged pressures promoted by the PP against the lawyer Javier Gómez de Liaño when he was the defender of the former treasurer of the party, in full escalation of tension with him due to the fear that he would make public the formation's box b, then chaired by Mariano Rajoy.
Cospedal has acknowledged up to six meetings with Villarejo but only so that he could let him know what negative information he received from the party, according to these same sources. The former general secretary of the PP and former defense minister under Rajoy has said she does not know anything related to this matter. In another piece of this macro case, Operation Kitchen, was initially investigated for its alleged participation in a parapolice operation to steal documents from Bárcenas, but Judge García-Castellón decided to file the case regarding it.
Cospedal testifies a day after former commissioner Villarejo - sentenced to 19 years in prison - did so, suggesting to the judge that "probably" in one of the "many" meetings he had with her, they talked about a mafia boss. Russian-Georgian whom Gómez de Liaño himself defended. Today, Cospedal has denied the majority and has insisted that he did not speak with the former commissioner about any Russian.
The name of Zakhar Kalashov, considered a mafia boss and convicted in 2010 in Spain for money laundering, appears in the diaries that were seized from the former commissioner, where there were also notes about “some possible payments that Gómez de Liaño would have supposedly received from his then client, as Villarejo explained to the media.
According to the order of the Court that ordered the judge to investigate these pressures on Bárcenas and his lawyer, Villarejo would have taken steps in 2014 “to obtain information about said alleged payments” and about which he would have spoken to the then Secretary of State for Security, Francisco Martinez.
Cospedal explained today, according to these legal sources, that he only met with Martínez on one occasion and it was to discuss a matter of "candidacies" for his party, totally unrelated to Bárcenas or his lawyer. Furthermore, he has insisted that she did not know who was paying for the former treasurer's defense.
