One more step brings Rajoy closer to Andorran justice. The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid has agreed this Wednesday to endorse the measure of the Secretary of State for Justice to give effect to the rogatory commission issued by the Andorran justice to bring the former president of the government before the courts of the Pyrenean country, where he is accused for his involvement in the tricks of the patriotic police in that country.
The prosecution endorsed last week the cooperation with Andorra in that judicial investigation, admitted for processing by the Andorran batlle (judge) Stephanie Garcia.
The complaint maintains that Rajoy, two of his ministers and various high-ranking police officers in 2014 and 2015 used blackmail, threats, coercion and extortion on the management of Banca Privada d'Andorra so that -infringing banking secrecy- they give information about the accounts that politicians such as Jordi Pujol, Artur Mas and Oriol Junqueras supposedly had in that entity. This complaint was filed in 2020 by the Institut de Drets Humans d'Andorra and admitted for processing last June. In addition to Rajoy, the defendants are the then ministers of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro, and Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz; his secretary of state, Francisco Martínez; the general director of the National Police Corps, Ignacio Cosidó; the curators –retired- Eugenio Pino, José Manuel Villarejo and Marcelino Martín-Blas; Chief Police Inspectors Celestino Barroso and Bonifacio Díaz; and Commissioner Pedro Esteban, responsible for information services in Catalonia.
Rajoy's defense has tried through various resources to paralyze the Andorran rogatory commission, in part alleging a possible violation of the fundamental rights to effective judicial protection and equality, but the prosecution believes that what this strategy "really" covers up is a trial on the actions of the Court of Instruction 32 of Madrid and the Section of the Provincial Court, before which attempts are made to stop the rogatory. The prosecution emphasizes that the "questioning" that is made of the actions of the General Directorate -the one in charge of processing Andorra's request-, which in the appellant's opinion is more than a mere procedural act, "in his case it would be a of ordinary legality, not likely to be evaluated by the special procedure of fundamental rights as the violation of article 14 that is invoked is not proven. The public ministry also warns that the appeal raised is already devoid of purpose because the commission has already been processed.
In 2014, the Interior Attaché of the Spanish embassy in Andorra, Celestino Barroso, requested a meeting with the BPA management. He was seen in Andorra with Joan Pau Miquel, CEO of the entity who, surprised by the appointment, recorded the conversation. In it, he told her that there were people from Madrid, referring to the police, interested in her collaboration with certain information; he told her that if she did not help, the bank would receive an "axe blow". Barroso urged him to a new meeting in Madrid, with another person, who introduced himself as Félix Rodríguez but was actually Marcelino Martín-Blas, a high command of the National Police Corps. In three meetings throughout that June, Miquel understood that they wanted information on Pujol, Mas and Junqueras. Miquel denies having given them to him.
On July 7, 2014, in any case, the newspaper El Mundo published an alleged screenshot of a bank computer with money movements of various members of the Pujol family. Three weeks later, Jordi Pujol confessed that the family had money in Andorra, from -he said- an inheritance from his father. The Pujols sued BPA for the alleged crimes of disclosure of banking secrecy and false documentation.
BPA, in any case, was intervened in March 2015 because it effectively received an "hack" from FinCen, the American organization that fights the criminal economy. Four legal cases linked BPA with various mafia branches, although none of those accused at the time has been sentenced to date for the crimes initially announced by the Spanish police and justice. Of the alleged link between BPA and the "Sinaloa cartel" there was never even a complaint. In one of the famous recordings of the famous commissioner Villarejo, you can hear him say: "We got in touch with our American intelligence colleagues and with FinCen and we sent them reports riddled with lies."
