The Prosecutor's Office of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia has opened its first investigation into the Catalunya operation following the revelations recently provided by La Vanguardia and Eldiario.es. In a decree, signed by the chief prosecutor of Catalonia, Francisco Bañeras, the public ministry opens proceedings to clarify the attempt to investigate in 2012 by the Ministry of the Interior, led by Jorge Fernández Díaz, the then chief prosecutor of Catalonia, Martín Rodríguez Sol, with the apparent objective of seeking incriminating evidence against him.
These are the first investigations opened by the Prosecutor's Office on Operation Catalunya, the operation devised by the Ministry of the Interior during the time of Mariano Rajoy to act against personalities close to independence nationalism and other personalities to try to deactivate what would later be called the processes with methods apparently outside the law.
The Prosecutor's Office, which has the approval of the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, to open these proceedings, agrees for this purpose to "collect" from La Vanguardia and Eldiario.es the documents on which these media have based their joint investigation in regarding the case of Rodríguez Sol and "any other documents in his possession that are related to the events that are the subject of this investigation."
In essence, it is an alleged report from the internal affairs unit of the Police that was located in the Ministry of the Interior and sent there by the Deputy Operational Directorate, led by Eugenio Pino, and which proposed investigating "based on information received" , among other people from Catalan society, the aforementioned former chief prosecutor of Catalonia or the businesswoman Sol Daurella, president and main shareholder of the Coca-Cola bottling company.
The Prosecutor's Office, in the decree, cites headlines and entire sentences of the information published on January 16 to conclude that "the events reported (...) and in the case of proving the carrying out of prospective police investigation activities on the person of the then Superior Prosecutor of Catalonia could constitute a crime against privacy committed by a public official, and, where appropriate, a crime of administrative prevarication, as well as falsification of official documents, all without prejudice to other crimes that could be related to the facts described in this Decree or any others that may arise during this investigation."
The Prosecutor's Office is struck by the document that accompanies the information "presumably official in appearance with the letterhead of the Internal Affairs Unit of the General Directorate of the National Police Corps" and that it does not bear the signature of any head of internal affairs and neither date.
The decree also highlights that this investigation "of a pre-procedural nature" was never brought to the attention of any judicial body or the Public Prosecutor's Office despite the fact that the agents in charge, who, if applicable, had been commissioned for the same, were legally obliged thereto".
Finally, the prosecutor's decree instructs the General Commissioner of the Judicial Police of the CNP to "make the appropriate inquiries" in order to determine the veracity of the document and indicate "its date of issue", as well as "the identification -a through their professional license number - of the officials who could have written it". Furthermore, the public ministry requires that if the existence of the document is proven, information is provided on the police actions to which it would have given rise in relation to Rodríguez Sol, the police authority that directed those investigations and the identity of the officials or authorities. to whom the results of the eventual investigation were communicated.
The document, as La Vanguardia was able to verify, concluded with a disturbing note: “The information received appears for the most part on the internet and has not been confirmed so far.” A true confession of the prospective nature of the investigations, that is, the objective of searching for incriminating evidence without previously existing elements to do so.
Rodríguez Sol, from the conservative sector, was appointed senior prosecutor of Catalonia in July 2012 and presented his resignation in March 2013. During his brief period at the head of the public ministry he had two relevant clashes with the Government, enough to explain that his mandate in Catalunya was so short.
The first, when Rodríguez Sol opened proceedings against the newspaper El Mundo for the publication on November 17, 2012, a week before the Catalan elections, of a false report about accounts of Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
The Government felt bad about this action against an operation that was actually instigated by it. A subsequent investigation by the then head of the internal services unit of the Police, Marcelino Martín Blas, concluded by certifying his absolute falsehood. Fernández Díaz reported this in Congress, omitting that he had received documents from the police leadership that mentioned these ghost accounts.
The prosecutor's second clash with the government of Mariano Rajoy occurred in the following March, when, even though he ruled out that legality supported a referendum on the independence of Catalonia, he was in favor of finding a formula that would allow citizens to be consulted: “The people need to be given the opportunity to express what they want; in general, to any town.” In a climate of media pressure in Madrid in favor of his dismissal, the State Attorney General, Eduardo Torres-Dulce, immediately announced that he was opening a dismissal file against him. Rodríguez Sol anticipated his resignation.
In the alleged report from the internal services unit that was released last week, it is explained that the investigation seeks “links between the top prosecutor and the political party Unió Democràtica de Catalunya (UDC) – the party that formed a coalition with the Pujol's CDC – and the commissions managed by the lawyers of the aforementioned party. Rodríguez Sol would end up running as a UDC candidate in the 2015 Catalan elections, the last before the liquidation of that historic Christian Democratic party.
