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

MadridAfter four months, the trial of the Kitchen case at the National Court has been concluded and is awaiting sentencing. The accused included 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 'caja B' (slush fund) from Luis Bárcenas. This is the prosecution's thesis. On the other hand, all the accused, in a completely coordinated strategy, maintain that the operation was actually intended to find the straw men or money abroad that the former PP treasurer might possess.

In the last session at the National Court, some of the accused made use of their final plea. 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 nothing more than 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 down 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 start of a brief one-minute intervention.

“To 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 para-police operation" that aimed to "boycott" or "obstruct" the investigation of the Gürtel case, which was tracking the irregular financing of the PP.

The former PP treasurer, who is a private prosecutor, maintains that the operation was "criminal and clandestine" and aimed to "make relevant information disappear" about 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 Unit for Economic and Fiscal Crimes (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 'caja B' (slush fund).

An operation to search for Bárcenas' money

At the time of the declaration, all the accused 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 money that Bárcenas might have in Switzerland: “When there is a car waiting to go get money, obviously a service must be set up, no matter how we approach it,” he argued. During the final reports, all the lawyers have maintained the same line. Pedro Colina, lawyer for Francisco Martínez, for example, has described a “real, lawful and legal police intelligence operation” with a “legitimate national interest” to “seek money and assets” from Bárcenas.

At the time, Jorge Fernández Díaz even denied having knowledge of the events until they appeared in the press: “I hadn't heard about it from above, or below, or from the right, or from the left. Nobody had spoken to me about it,” he assured. And he stated that “nobody” from the PP conveyed to him “any concern or particular interest” about Bárcenas's documentation.

For his part, José Manuel Villarejo, a retired commissioner of the Spanish police, agreed that it was an "official and correct" operation to "locate assets abroad" of the PP's former treasurer, but he took advantage of it to involve Mariano Rajoy: “This operation was used because, if there was anything that affected him, to trap him. I have the impression that everyone was deceived by Rajoy's genius”.

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's papers. On the same day, María Dolores de Cospedal, who was investigated for two months in 2021, denied having made any "commission" to Villarejo.

Coinciding with the final stretch of the trial, however, Judge Antonio Piña ordered 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 PP's number two 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 have 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 pointed out that the retired commissioner wrote “exactly what he was experiencing”.

However, there were no notes 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 he exchanged with Francisco Martínez: “The operation has been carried out successfully, everything has been dumped,” the minister said in October 2013 about Luis Bárcenas's electronic devices. In fact, Jorge Fernández Díaz's defense line 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.