Fernández Díaz distances himself from Operation Kitchen: "I didn't know it existed, nobody had spoken to me about it"

MadridJorge Fernández Díaz and Francisco Martínez have buried the hatchet and, denial after denial, have executed a non-aggression pact with all the trimmings. After two months of trial and more than 150 witnesses, the two main defendants in the Kitchen case have entered the scene: they have followed the planned script and have denied any involvement in the espionage against Luis Bárcenas. The Prosecutor's Office is requesting 15 years in prisonfor the former Minister of the Interior and the former Secretary of State for Security. Their statements have shown a pacification that was non-existent during the investigation, many points of connection, and a clear contradiction. The common denominator has been to distance themselves from the state's underbelly. Jorge Fernández Díaz stated that he became aware of the Kitchen operation, "like any ordinary person," in late 2015, when "it began to appear" in the media: "Until then, I had not heard of it from above, or below, or from the right, or from the left. No one had spoken to me about it," he assured. Francisco Martínez also denied ordering a operation against the former PP treasurer: "I never ordered investigations into anything," he said.

However, his account has not been fully consistent. The discrepancy arose from a supposed phone call on July 13, 2013. Francisco Martínez explained that the minister called him to ask if he knew anything about a "close collaborator" of the Bárcenas family: "I had not the slightest idea. Nor did the minister. I asked Eugenio Pino [deputy operational director of the Spanish police], who confirmed to me that there was a collaborator who acted as the family's driver. And I confirmed this to the minister." It is Sergio Ríos, who also sits on the defendant's bench and allegedly betrayed the former PP treasurer in exchange for payment from the reserve funds. However, later, Jorge Fernández Díaz denied this: "I could not be interested in something I didn't know existed, I could not talk about something I was unaware of.

The incriminating messages

One of the hot points were messages that they would have exchanged in 2013 talking about the Kitchen case. In one of them, for example, the then minister announced that the emptying of Bárcenas' devices had been done "successfully". Francisco Martínez protocolized them before a notary in 2019 – he showed them to him without making a copy of the device data – and they led to the indictment of Jorge Fernández Díaz. The ex-minister's strategy is to deny their validity to try to free himself from the main evidence against him: his defense provided an expert who detected "signs of manipulation" and now he has denied that they were real and has reiterated that at that time he knew nothing about it: "It doesn't make sense. It is not normal for the minister to inform the secretary of state about operational matters. It is number two who informs number one".

Previously, at the express request of the former minister, Pedro Colina, Francisco Martínez's lawyer, he avoided asking him about the messages, even though he was the one who took them to the notary. His defense wanted to avoid the "confrontation" that became evident in the face-to-face they staged in November 2020 and admits that he knew the former minister would contradict him about the July 2013 call. Be that as it may, sources consulted by ARA allege that the judicial future of the two is not linked and, therefore, there is no need to pick at the wound.

The null concern of the PP

Where both have fully agreed is in lowering the PP's concern about the information that Luis Bárcenas might have, even though this same week the audio was played during the trial in which the then number two of the party, María Dolores de Cospedal, tells former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo that it would be "better to be able to stop" the dissemination of the PP's former treasurer's notebook. "I never perceived any interest or concern about hard drives or accounting," replied Francisco Martínez. And he downplayed it: "I perceived that this was not believed, it was even joked about a little." In fact, he even made fun of it: "I think the issue of the hard drives is a kind of media legend. To say that someone ordered them to be found is a fantasy." "No one in the party conveyed any particular concern or interest to me," added Jorge Fernández Díaz.

The relationship with Villarejo

He also tried to distance himself from Villarejo. The former minister said he had "no contact" with him between 2013 and 2015 and assured that he met him personally in June 2016 at the tribute event for Eugenio Pino's retirement. However, there is an audio from December 2012 in which both can be heard plotting Operation Catalonia against the Pujol family: "I will deny even under torture that this meeting took place," said the then minister at that time.

In his turn, Francisco Martínez refuted that the parapolice operation underway had the name Kitchen –kitchen in English, because the driver could reach the Bárcenas family's kitchen–. "I never heard of it, it's a journalistic denomination," he said. However, there is a recording of a conversation between him and Villarejo in which both introduce Sergio Ríos as the "cook". Likewise, unlike what he did in the Congress commission on Operation Catalonia, the former number two of the Interior has not refuted that the audios are true: "I have had so many meetings with him that I don't remember them, but I don't deny them either," he said. However, he wanted to make it clear that he was not passing on "anything illegal or irregular" to him.