Seen for sentence the trial of the Kitchen case: what was the Spanish police looking for in Luis Bárcenas?

MadridAfter four months, the trial of the Kitchen case at the National Court has been submitted for sentencing. In the dock sat the leadership of Mariano Rajoy's Ministry of the Interior, with Jorge Fernández Díaz at the helm, who is under suspicion for allegedly orchestrating an operation to steal information about the PP's slush fund from Luis Bárcenas. This is the prosecution's thesis. In contrast, all the accused, in an absolutely coordinated strategy, maintain that the operation was actually intended to search for the straw men or the money abroad that the PP's former treasurer might have had.

In the last session at the National Court, some of the accused made use of their final word. José Manuel Villarejo took the opportunity to apologize for all the conversations and meetings he recorded: “I deeply regret the harm I may have caused to all those who have been affected, they are simply comments in relaxed environments,” he said. He also alluded to his famous diaries: “My notes were temporary, to remember in a short time, but right now I wouldn't even know how to explain why I noted certain things,” he admitted. “I still wonder how I managed to step on such important corns to end up where I have,” he had said at the very beginning of a brief one-minute intervention.

“Boycott” or “obstruct” the Gürtel case

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which is seeking fifteen years in prison for the former minister and his right-hand man, Francisco Martínez, and nineteen years for Villarejo, considers it proven that Operation Kitchen was a “criminal parapolice operation” whose objective was to “boycott” or “obstruct” the investigation of the Gürtel case, which was tracking the irregular financing of the PP.

The former treasurer of the PP, who is a private prosecutor, maintains that the operation was “criminal and clandestine” and had the objective of “making relevant information disappear” regarding the Gürtel case: “What he might have known could have brought down the Spanish government,” stated Bárcenas' lawyer, Marta Giménez-Cassina. And she accused Jorge Fernández Díaz of having participated in the “planning, coordination, and monitoring” of the operation.

One of the illustrative witnesses was Manuel Morocho, inspector of the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) and lead investigator of the Gürtel case. He confirmed the existence of a “police operation without judicial authorization” and detected “maneuvers” to “torpedo” the investigation into the PP's slush fund.

An operation to search for Bárcenas' money

Weeks ago, when they testified, all the defendants denied the majority. Eugenio Pino, who was Deputy Operational Director (DAO) of the National Police, argued that the operation wanted to follow the trail of the money that Bárcenas might have in Switzerland: “When there is a car waiting to go get money, obviously you have to set up a service, no matter how we put ourselves,” he argued. During the final reports, all the lawyers maintained the same line. Pedro Colina, lawyer for Francisco Martínez, for example, described a “real, lawful and legal police intelligence operation” with a “legitimate national interest” to “seek money and assets” of Bárcenas.

At the time, Jorge Fernández Díaz even denied having any knowledge of the events until it appeared in the press: “I hadn't heard about it from above, or below, or from the right, or from the left. Nobody had told me about it,” he assured. And he stated that “no one” from the PP conveyed to him “any particular concern or interest” about Bárcenas's documentation.

For his part, José Manuel Villarejo, a retired inspector of the Spanish police, agreed that it was an "official and correct" operation to "locate assets abroad" of the former PP treasurer, but he took advantage to involve Mariano Rajoy:

Rajoy and Cospedal

In fact, one of the highlights of the trial was the summoning as a witness of the former Spanish president, who once again played dumb: he denied the facts from top to bottom and said it was "absolutely false" that he destroyed the last page of Bárcenas' papers. On the same day, María Dolores de Cospedal, who was investigated for two months in 2021, denied making any "commission" to Villarejo.

Coinciding with the final stretch of the trial, however, judge Antonio Piña commissioned the Internal Affairs Unit of the Spanish police to investigate if there are “indications of criminality” in the recordings of the conversations between Cospedal and Villarejo. The audios reveal that the number two of the PP was aware of the alleged plot and that Rajoy was also aware of it: “The president told me, no one else told me,” she said at the time.

Villarejo's diaries

One of the fundamental pieces of evidence in the trial has been Villarejo's diaries and audios. One of the revealing testimonies was Gonzalo Fraga, who led the investigation into the Kitchen case at the Internal Affairs Unit of the National Police. “Villarejo doesn't fool himself,” he said. Prosecutor César de Rivas asserted that the retired commissioner wrote “exactly what he was experiencing”.

However, there was no entry in the diaries about Jorge Fernández Díez. So, why has he ended up in the dock? His indictment was a direct consequence of the messages exchanged with Francisco Martínez: “The operation has been successful, everything has been overturned,” the minister said in October 2013 about Luis Bárcenas's electronic devices. In fact, Jorge Fernández Díaz's line of defense has been to deny the existence of the incriminating messages. And unlike the belligerence that both maintained during the investigation, Francisco Martínez has buried the hatchet and has not made any allusion – neither he nor his lawyer – to the messages.