The recordings of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo seized by the police in the records of his properties continue to make headlines in the press, specifically this Thursday in El País. In this case, the former Secretary General of the PP and former Minister of Defense María Dolores de Cospedal is the protagonist of a conversation with Villarejo in which, between insults, she is interested in false reports to harm the former leader of Podemos and founder Pablo Iglesias and the purple party.
The meeting, according to the Prisa newspaper, took place in May 2017 when Cospedal was already a minister and at the height of the so-called "patriotic police". They were talking about the so-called PISA report (Pablo Iglesias S.A.), a document fabricated in 2016 by the so-called patriotic police and leaked to the press to spread the false idea that the leader of Podemos had received illegal money from the Iranian dictatorship.
During the conversation, both refer to Iglesias as a "son of a bitch" and the commissioner explains to Cospedal that he had another matter, a report on alleged meetings of Podemos, the Cuban secret services and ETA in Venezuela. "Damn, that's a bomb," says the then number 2 of the PP. A report that, according to what Villarejo tells Cospedal, he offered to the then number two of the Interior when Jorge Fernández Díaz was minister, Francisco Martínez. After telling him that Martínez did not take advantage of it ("he screwed up"), Cospedal replies "but I do want that."
The National Court archived ten days ago the last investigation opened by the alleged irregular financing of Podemos.
After knowing this recording, Pablo Iglesias has assured that his legal team will study "what margin there is to take legal action" against the former commissioner and the former minister and has denied the accusations that both have made about him and his party.
In an interview on Catalunya Ràdio, the former leader of Podemos, asked if there were any meetings with ETA and the Cuban secret service, stated that "it is a joke from start to finish", but added that it serves to fill newspapers and appear on radio and television.
Iglesias has stated that he is not surprised by this information, and has argued that his objective is to generate "media discredit" and that this would affect the electoral results of Podemos, and he has also regretted that the courts do not later condemn this type of information, which he assures that they are false.
"I understand that the PSOE says that this was at the time of the PP, but it is not true. It is evident who put Pegasus at the Prime Minister," said Iglesias, who considers that there are sectors of the State that do not accept that the Socialists govern with Podemos and have the support of ERC and EH Bildu in Congress.
In another interview in RAC 1, when asked if the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, should do something about it, Iglesias said that "it is obvious that he should because it is evidence that there are sectors of the State, connected with certain sectors of power media, who conspire with sectors of economic power to try to bring down the government".
-Villarejo: Pigtails [Pablo Iglesias] is a son of a bitch…
-Cospedal: A full-fledged son of a bitch.
-Villarejo: Excuse me, in 2014, (...) I had a second hell of a topic, it was that I had a colonel from the Venezuelan secret service where he was going to give me some minutes where there were meetings between ETA and the Cuban secret service and with those of Podemos. In Venezuela!
-Cospedal: Damn, that's a bomb.
-Villarejo: But that bomb, when I told these people, Paco [Martínez, former 'number two' of the Ministry of the Interior] screwed up. Paco, poor thing, good people and such...
-Cospedal: But I do want that.
In another fragment of the conversation, the commissioner explains to Cospedal that the police operation to accuse Pablo Iglesias of having collected large amounts of money from the Venezuelan regime through a bank account in the Grenadine Islands was a fiasco. In any case, the commissioner never provided evidence of these links, nor was there a judicial investigation that proved anything similar against Podemos and its leaders.
-Villarejo: Well, it turns out that there was a guy, an admiral, who said, “come on, so-and-so”, so I talk to so-and-so, and in the end they send this poor guy, [police inspector José Ángel Fuentes] Gago, who appeared yesterday …
-Cospedal: Yes.
-Villarejo: …which is dumber than… And of course, [Eugenio] Pino [deputy operational director of the Police] sent him, and they took me away. And I said, "Hey, man." They did that shit about the Pisa report, that's rubbish, and with that they vaccinated him. I think it was commissioned by El Coletas, it's that he has no other explanation. So that line, which I could reconstruct for you, of course, all of that is worth dough, of course it is worth dough!
-Cospedal: Sure.
-Villarejo: But what political profitability, María Dolores, does it have to discover the minutes where these sons of bitches had instructions from the Cuban secret service, from the ETA members and from the Venezuelan secret service, these sons of bitches? The Wallet, fundamentally. We seek their ruin.
