The controversial ex-police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, just as he activated the so-called operation Catalunya a decade ago, has now opened the box of thunder and has handed over the key to initiate the judicial offensive against those political leaders, of the government of Mariano Rajoy who they orchestrated maneuvers to look for dirty laundry from leaders or businessmen linked to the independence movement. In recent months, a series of new recordings in the possession of the former police officer and outside the legal case have come to light that reveal this operation by the sewers of the State. This sound material now serves as the basis for trying to bring justice to the instigators.
Alicia Sánchez-Camacho is at the epicenter of all the lawsuits filed over the Catalunya operation. As president of the Catalan PP –currently a senator– she held a secret meeting with the former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, a person who during the government of Mariano Rajoy became the maximum referent of the so-called sewers of the State.
The Sumarroca family of businessmen now places Sánchez-Camacho as the nuclear point of their complaint filed in the Supreme Court, and which is pending admission for processing.
To do this, he provides in his complaint a recorded conversation between the senator and Villarejo in which the former gives him the names, among others, of the Sumarroca as the target of a blacklist to pursue. His thesis is that as of 2012 –and in subsequent years– various police officers, members of the central government, leaders of the Popular Party and even certain media outlets and journalists, “agreed to develop a plan against said movement political, which is usually referred to with the name of operation Catalunya”.
The Sumarrocas believe that they were victims of all that and that the two cases that are prosecuted against them have a suspicious origin, such as the alleged payment of commissions to the Pujol family in exchange for awards, or the delivery of the famous 3% to the old CDC .
The Catalunya operation had a primary objective: the Pujol family. Thus, it has been left black on white in all the sound and graphic material that has emerged from the Tándem case, whose main investigator is Villarejo. The Pujols have already denounced that a group of agents illegally removed information about the eldest son of the former president, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, and tried to prosecute him. However, the judge who was investigating the family's finances – and for what is pending trial – became aware of the attempt to introduce suspicious material into the case and charged several police officers. That is why the number two of the Police, Eugenio Pino, has been condemned.
The Pujols were the first who tried to appear in the Villarejo case as harmed, as victims. In fact, the case was initiated by complaints from Victoria Álvarez and Javier de la Rosa, encouraged and financed by the patriotic police.
However, the judge rejected his claim. The argument was that although Villarejo could have carried out a parallel investigation against the Pujols to their detriment, the legal case that had been opened in the National High Court against the family for their hidden accounts in Andorra had nothing to do with her. In other words, it would be two different lines, the official one, under the supervision of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the judge, and the extrajudicial one.
The “harassment and demolition” campaign to put an end to the independence movement and everyone who was related to it – which the complainants denounce – was also directed against high-ranking police officers. Specifically, the former head of the National Police Corps in Catalonia Narcís Ortega – who was appointed by former minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba – denounces that he was removed from his post for purely ideological reasons.
This purge – which took him first to a Teruel police station and then to Zaragoza "as a lesser evil" – occurred after Alicia Sánchez-Camacho also put him on the famous black list of people allegedly colluding with the pro-independence sphere. "It supposes an added problem because Narciso [Ortega] is close to the former Minister of the Interior Felip Puig," explained the popular leader to the former commissioner.
"The return of Narciso, with all the people he has here subdued and infiltrated in the police, will be the key piece that Puig has here in the police," collects one of the audios of former commissioner Villarejo that the former police chief has contributed in his complaint before the Prosecutor's Office against, in addition to Sánchez-Camacho, Dolores de Cospedal, Fernández Díaz and Martínez.
The plan orchestrated against Ortega, according to the complaint, also led the political police to leak false news to discredit him personally.
“It is absolutely inappropriate for a democratic State of law, respectful of ideological freedom and political pluralism, for the police to investigate certain people only because of their ideology and to do so following the guidelines of leaders of other political forces and at the service of the interests of the latter”. With this start, the current Minister of Economy, Jaume Giró, has denounced before the Barcelona Prosecutor's Office that he was illegally investigated in the framework of the so-called Catalunya operation since 2012, at a time when he did not hold any public office but he worked at La Caixa.
The core of his complaint, signed by the lawyer Jordi Pina, as in the other cases, is the conversation between Villarejo and Sánchez-Camacho. "Jaume Giró, Enrique Lacalle and Sumarroca, these three, must be investigated, but now", is heard in one of the audios.
The Minister regrets that he has suffered persecution solely for ideological reasons and puts on the table the suspicion that he may have been followed or wiretapped outside of judicial control and in an irregular manner. Several of the complainants also highlight the fact that all this "persecution" was carried out under the umbrella of the Ministry of the Interior, led by Jorge Fernández Díaz, and with the use of public funds.
"I believe that this operation has not existed at all," Sánchez-Camacho assured in Parliament during an investigation commission. "What you say in relation to the sewers, look, I would add, I don't know what you mean because I don't believe at all that this operation in Catalonia has taken place," he also said in parliament. Junts has pulled from the newspaper library to put the words of the former popular leader in front of the mirror of Villarejo's audios. The complaint is already filed in the Supreme Court for the crime of false testimony. In it, the political party asks Mariano Rajoy's former chief of staff, Jorge Moragas, and Jordi Pujol Ferrusola's former partner, Victoria Álvarez, to testify as witnesses. Also former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo.
Despite the fact that the new recordings – which have remained hidden until his first big trial entered the final stretch – are the basis for the trickle of complaints, the complainants are also giving credibility to the statements of the accused police officer who has been pouring out since he was left released after spending more than three years in prison. During this last year and a half, in an effort to intoxicate him, Villarejo has come to affirm – without any type of evidentiary basis – that the National Intelligence Center was behind the 17-A attacks.
The former president of Futbol Club Barcelona Sandro Rosell has been one of the first to act. He has been denouncing for a long time that the cause for which he spent more than two years in preventive detention and for which he was finally acquitted was orchestrated by the State apparatus. Now he believes that the latest uncovered audios of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo show that false evidence was produced against him.
He has filed a complaint before the judge of the National High Court Manuel García Castellón who directs the investigation against the former commissioner. In this, he asks that several police officers be investigated for agreeing, together with members of the government and the Popular Party, in the elaboration of a plan against the independence movement. "This strategy consisted, fundamentally, in obtaining information and/or preparing evidence false that served to intimidate, investigate, accuse, harm and discredit”, a series of people, including him. For this reason, he now wants the judge to uncover who was behind this Catalonia operation, although there are no signs that it will finally be admitted for processing, according to legal sources.
Rosell has once again made his strategy palpable in the trial for which he is accused of a tax offense and which is being held in a Barcelona court. His defense highlights that he "feels the object of persecution and there is no lack of reasons."
