The Prosecutor's Office of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) yesterday opened its first investigation into the Catalunya operation following the revelations recently provided by La Vanguardia and Eldiario.es. In a decree, the chief prosecutor of Catalonia, Francisco Bañeras, opens proceedings to clarify whether the Ministry of the Interior led by Jorge Fernández Díaz ordered an investigation in 2012 of the then chief prosecutor of Catalonia, Martín Rodríguez Sol, with the apparent objective of searching for incriminating evidence. against him.
These are the first investigations opened by the Prosecutor's Office on Operation Catalunya, the operation devised by the Interior during the time of Mariano Rajoy to act against personalities, the majority close to nationalism, to try to deactivate what would later be called the process with methods apparently outside the law.
The Prosecutor's Office, which has the approval of the State Attorney General, Álvaro García, agrees to "collect" from La Vanguardia and Eldiario.es the documents on which these media have based their investigation in relation to the case and "any other documents that exist." in their possession and are related to the facts that are the subject of this investigation.”
In essence, it is an alleged report from the internal affairs unit of the Police that reached the Ministry of the Interior and was sent there by the Deputy Operational Directorate, led by Eugenio Pino, and which proposed investigating “based on information received” among, among others, other people from Catalan society, the aforementioned former chief prosecutor or the businesswoman Sol Daurella, president and main shareholder of the Coca-Cola bottler.
The prosecutor's decree cites headlines and entire sentences of the information published on January 16 to conclude that the facts reported, if proven, “could constitute a crime against privacy committed by a public official, and, if applicable, of a crime of administrative malfeasance, as well as falsifying official documents", without prejudice to other crimes that "could be related to the facts described" or "others that may surface" during the 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 does not bear the signature of any head of internal affairs or date. some.
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 “were legally obliged to do so.” Finally, the prosecutor's decree instructs the General Commissioner of the Judicial Police 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" of the officials. who could have written it. Furthermore, the Public Prosecutor's Office requires that if the existence of the document is proven, information must be provided on the police actions to which it may have given rise, on the police authority that directed those investigations and the identity of the officials or authorities to whom it was communicated. the results of the eventual investigation.
Rodríguez Sol, from the conservative sector, was appointed senior prosecutor 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. The first, when he 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 itself. The second shock occurred a few months later, when he was in favor of finding a formula that would allow citizens to be consulted. 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 supposed report from the internal services unit that was released last week, it was explained that the investigation sought links between the top prosecutor and the Unió Democràtica de Catalunya (UDC) and the commissions managed by the lawyers of the aforementioned party. Rodríguez Sol would end up running for UDC in the 2015 Catalan elections.
The new spokesperson for the Federal Executive of the PSOE, Esther Peña, yesterday celebrated the opening of these proceedings and urged to go "to the end" at the judicial and political level in the Catalunya operation without ruling out the possibility of summoning the investigative commission. from Congress to former President of the Government Mariano Rajoy. "The commission is not constituted, I cannot tell you if Rajoy will be on the list of those appearing, but the intention is that no one is left out if they can contribute something to clarify the facts and those responsible," he declared in his first press conference in Ferraz. as spokesperson, after the meeting of the new Federal Executive.
Also linked to the Catalunya operation, the judge of the National Court Manuel García Castellón rejected yesterday, two years after the petition, the appearance of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, son of the former president, as a victim in one of the pieces of the Villarejo case - the alleged attempt to blackmail the Andorran bank BPA to find account numbers of the Pujol family – since the events that he denounces, alleged criminal activities carried out in Andorra by Spanish citizens against him, are already being investigated by the courts of that country. The judge bases his decision on this argument to refuse to investigate the Catalunya operation as a piece of the Villarejo case.
