The Gürtel case inspector denounces an operation to torpedo the PP's funding investigation

MadridThe judicial calendar is very intense this week in Madrid: from the statements of the Pujol family to the accused in the to the Kitchen case, which judges the use of the Ministry of the Interior by the PP to spy on its former treasurer and prevent evidence of the party's irregular financing from emerging, which was finally sentenced in the Gürtel case and led to the motion of no confidence against Mariano Rajoy. This Wednesday and Thursday, a key witness has testified: Manuel Morocho, who is an inspector of the UDEF of the National Police and was the main investigator of the Gürtel case. The witness assured that there was a "strategy" to "dismantle" the unit that investigated Bárcenas's papers and that included the PP's B accounting. According to Europa Press, he explained to the court that certain reports related to the case could not have been delivered to the judge because there was no "capacity" to do so, in addition to reporting pressure that increased from 2011 when the PP "entered the government and took the reins of the police".

On Wednesday, at the beginning of his statement, Morocho detailed the existence of a police operation "without judicial authorization" on Bárcenas and his circle and ratified that he received pressure not to include the name of the Spanish president Mariano Rajoy in a report on the former treasurer's papers. This Thursday, he went further and said that the "group" responsible for these investigations was "dismantled". "It was a sought-after strategy," he stated, emphasizing that some agents of the unit received "better" job offers, with higher salaries and specialized roles. He admitted that he could not retain anyone. Specifically, he said that the group had 11 police officers in 2013 and that a year later only 5 remained. According to his account, this is why certain reports on the judicial piece of the Bárcenas Papers could not be completed and delivered to the judge.

"Self-censorship" within the research group

According to Morocho, within the group that was investigating the events, a kind of "self-censorship" was established when drafting the reports: "Changes, modifications and alterations had to be made," he said, in addition to placing substantial elements of the investigation in the annexes because they did not want them to appear. Therefore, he acknowledged that he had to find a strategy so that the judge would be aware of what was happening.

In fact, as Efe reports, the judge investigating the case, Pablo Ruz, was forced to take precautions in this investigation: he adopted measures such as working with an external laptop to avoid "information leaks" or discussing sensitive and critical issues with the investigation outside his office. Morocho himself assured that he had "surveillance and monitoring": "It was investigated whether my conduct was ethical or not, and if they had found anything, they would have blackmailed me," he explained. In any case, he made it clear that his and the judges' main objective was for the investigation to advance, even with difficulties.

Surveillance of Bárcenas's wife

On the other hand, the UDEF inspector also explained that some of his superiors proposed that he carry out surveillance on Rosalía Iglesias, Bárcenas's wife, after the former PP treasurer went to prison. However, he denied that it had anything to do with locating financial sources or straw men of the PP leader, since that was already being done —he said. It should be taken into account that one of the arguments of the defense of the accused in the Kitchen case is precisely that they were looking for how much money had been pocketed, despite the fact that the objective according to the Prosecutor's Office was the opposite: to know what he knew about the party's financing so that he could not speak.