The retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo has pointed to an “interest” in the PP and in the former president of the central Executive Mariano Rajoy for “taking out” the former president of the Generalitat Valenciana and former minister with the PP Eduardo Zaplana: “They thought they could challenge him for leadership ”.
Villarejo has spoken in these terms in his statement, as a witness, in the trial being followed against Zaplana and 14 other people in the Erial case, a procedure in which the alleged collection of more than 10 million has been investigated. euros in commissions derived from ITV concessions and wind farms in the Valencian Community. The fraud is quantified at more than 20 million euros.
Villarejo has been the first witness proposed by Zaplana's defense in the trial and has been asked about an appearance he made in 2021 in an investigative commission in the Congress of Deputies in which he assured that there was an interest in destroying Zaplana and that, for this, a Syrian citizen, a CNI confidant, had been used - this is the person who found some documents in the apartment that had been owned by Zaplana and that gave rise to the Erial case.
Asked about these statements, the witness stated that as an intelligence agent, he collected different information and learned that between 2010 and 2011 a series of actions began “tended to discredit Zaplana” for reasons unknown to him. “I didn't want to participate in the issue,” he said.
Subsequently, Villarejo has indicated that between 2016 and 2017 he had several meetings with the chief colonel of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) Manuel Corbín in which they talked about “several issues”, among them, Zaplana. “And I told him that it was a mistake to use bad arts to imply. "If there were suspicions, there would be an orthodox procedure," he said.
In this regard, and as he also stated in a second appearance in Congress, the witness has maintained that the number two of the UCO was “closely linked to the CNI” and “gave instructions to Corbín.” In fact, the latter told him on some occasion that there was “interest” from the CNI in him and “in the Valencia issues.”
Villarejo, questioned about whether there was any official or police investigation into Zaplana in 2011, said that “the interest there was was more political, to obtain information in case it could be prosecuted. Surprisingly, there was more interest in his own party in discrediting him than in the PSOE itself. I know that Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba had a good opinion of him,” he said.
He has also indicated that in that period of time he had conversations with the former president of Les Corts and former director general of the Police Juan Cotino, now deceased, due to this “interest” in Zaplana.
And he added: “I was a great friend of Cotino, he seemed like an honorable man to me although he was very dependent on Rajoy.” Asked, then, if Cotino was interested in investigating Zaplana, he responded: “Yes. My conviction, from what I saw, is that it was not self-interest but that they asked him to do it. He had many relations with Rajoy and the problem is that for whatever reasons they thought that Zaplana could, in the future, challenge him for leadership.”
Regarding the informant of Syrian origin, the witness stated: “I know what Corbín himself told me. There was no choice but to look for things. And I responded that that was a mistake, because killing a politician... Corbín told me that it was an act provoked to generate the investigation,” he added.
