Bárcenas points to the PP as the instigator of the Kitchen and implicates Rajoy in the slush fund

San Fernando de HenaresAn audio in which Mariano Rajoy is heard in the office on the seventh floor of the headquarters on Génova street receiving an envelope of cash and destroying the documentation that proved the existence of the PP's slush fund. This has been one of the protagonists of the expected declaration of Luis Bárcenas as a victim in the "This operation begins at the Popular Party headquarters with the deletion of data from computer hard drives. That is to say, it is initiated by the party leaders and then transferred to the part related to the Ministry of the Interior," Luis Bárcenas underlined during his declaration, which lasted four and a half hours. However, despite the PSOE's attempt to have the PP respond as a beneficiary through a lucrative title

for having benefited from the concealment of evidence, the National Court keeps the PP outside the scope of the case.

The change in Bárcenas' life

The turning point for Luis Bárcenas was on July 15, 2013, when he testified before the National Court as part of the Gürtel case: he confirmed the authenticity of his papers and handed over more documentation. That day everything changed. But before that meeting, he had had two encounters with the lawyer Javier Iglesias, to whom he presented himself as a "close associate" of the PP. First, he offered him 500,000 euros to manipulate the papers that accredited the PP's slush fund: "Modify the papers, change the concepts and amounts with the same handwriting and the same format to give them to the press and create uncertainty about which are false or true," Bárcenas recounted. The 500,000 euros could be paid by "affiliated businessmen" of the PP. Months later, when he was already in prison, Javier Iglesias "threatened" him, telling him that his wife would go to jail if he testified. But he testified "with all the forcefulness" the "reality" of the papers. As a result, he perceived a "totally drastic" change in his treatment in prison, with the emergence of many hostilities. For example, a photo of him entering Soto del Real was leaked more than two weeks later: "It is leaked at the moment I make a very forceful statement against people who represented the Popular Party," he emphasized.

Rajoy's paper shredder

We return to Mariano Rajoy's audio. After confirming that the initials MR corresponded to the then President of the Spanish government, the former PP treasurer described the scene as follows: "There was an amount of money left from the off-the-books accounting, and I go up to Rajoy's office. I hand him the last sheet of these transactions, which shows the balance I have for him in an envelope, which I hand over, and he keeps it. Upon seeing the documents, he is very surprised, he asks me how it was possible, and I tell him that it is the guarantee that the funds were used and received. He turns and puts it [the sheet of paper] into the paper shredder. And it is destroyed." He saved this recording in the cloud and on a USB drive that he first kept at home and then left at a workshop his wife had for restoring furniture, which is also where he kept about twenty boxes of PP documentation. When he got out of prison, he found that the USB had disappeared and that he had "nothing" in the cloud.

Without saying it, suspicion points to the intervention of the state's "cloacas" (secret services) in Operation Kitchen. The investigating judge, Manuel García-Castellón, concluded that what they were looking for was found in Rosalía Iglesias's workshop, but the Prosecutor's Office maintains that it "does not appear" that they achieved their purpose. In 2013, aware of the danger of the files, and in a context where Bárcenas was approaching PP members, he commissioned a prisoner he had befriended, Isidro Sánchez, to be ready to destroy Rajoy's audio: "I give him the instruction to have a specific recording located, I give him access codes, and I tell him that I will give him the instruction of when it has to be destroyed," he recalled. In exchange, he paid him between 4,000 and 4,500 euros.

However, the prisoner declared as a witness last Thursday and admitted that he could not complete the mission. He explained that, taking advantage of a permit to leave prison, Bárcenas had asked him to upload some documents to the cloud that would be delivered to him on a USB. But he didn't have time to do it and never knew what files they were because the Spanish police arrested him on an order of "search and capture that never existed." And he had to return to Soto del Real ahead of time. Even so, Bárcenas believes he must have done "something" because, when he got out of prison, he had nothing in the cloud: "What he did, I don't know," he admitted. Again, the possible intervention of the "policía patriótica" (patriotic police) emerges.

The driver was "a jack of all trades"

Luis Bárcenas also spoke about his relationship with his driver, Sergio Ríos, who is in the dock. He betrayed him and, in exchange for 50,000 euros, provided the state's sewers with information about the former PP treasurer. The Bárcenas family hired him in February 2013 after a PP security chief gave him their name: "We were looking for a person of absolute trust, he came highly recommended," he explained. His main function was to drive, but in practice he was a "man for everything" and was also responsible for "auxiliary tasks," such as cashing checks at the bank or moving documentation. Finally, in 2014, Bárcenas' wife, Rosalía Iglesias, raised "some doubts" about his "behavior" – she recounted that he began to have a "different behavior," with a "nervous" and "defiant" attitude – and they decided to let him go.