The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor requests a 15-year prison sentence for former Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz for spying on former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas using ministry resources. The indictment of the Kitchen operation requests the same sentence for its number two, the former Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martínez.

In this branch of the Tandem case or Villarejo case, the Prosecutor’s Office has filed charges against eight investigated, including the retired commissioner who is at the center of the investigation. For José Manuel Villarejo, the Prosecutor’s Office requests 19 years in prison.

The Public Ministry considers that in the operation to steal compromising documents for the PP from Bárcenas, launched in 2013, the defendants committed crimes of embezzlement, cover-up and against privacy. In the case of Villarejo, also bribery, which explains why his request for imprisonment is the highest.

The operation included spying on the phones and movements of the former treasurer through his driver and entering without judicial authorization to obtain the documents on the box b of the party that he kept in the restoration studio of his wife, Rosalía Iglesias.

The purpose was to “prevent all that potentially incriminating material for the Popular Party and its leaders that could be investigated from being formally contributed” to the investigation of the Gürtel case, which at that time had just been reactivated after the discovery of Bárcenas’ hidden accounts in Swiss.

For the driver, who for two years was paid 2,000 euros per month and from reserved funds and was given a position in the Police, the prosecutors are asking for 12 years and five months in prison. The then number two of the Police, Eugenio Pino, and for the one who was an adviser to María Dolores de Cospedal, the commissioner Andrés Manuel Gómez Gordo also claimed 15 years.

The lowest sentence, two and a half years for concealment, is for the then head of Police Internal Affairs, Commissioner Marcelino Martín Blas. The Prosecutor’s Office affirms that he ordered “strict surveillance” on Bárcenas and his wife, which came to overlap with those he ordered, resorting to his own Central Operational Support Unit (UCAO), Commissioner Enrique García Castaño. According to Anti-Corruption accounts, eight chief inspectors, two deputy inspectors, eight officers and 52 agents participated at some point in these surveillance. In total, 70 policemen.

For García Castaño, the accusation is 12 and a half years. It was he who, according to the prosecution, surreptitiously entered the study. There is no record that it was done with documentation or with the audio recordings of conversations between Bárcenas and the former president of the PP and the Government, Mariano Rajoy.

The Prosecutor’s Office explains an operation within an operation: both García Castaño and Villarejo kept at least part of the information obtained, which affected their superiors. They did so “in order to be able to use it in their favour, putting pressure on its eventual public disclosure, in the event that they adopt decisions within the scope of the Ministry of the Interior that they consider detrimental to their interests or in the event that they are required to at some point some type of responsibility for said illicit acts”.

All prison sentences carry even higher penalties of disqualification. In addition to the nine defendants, the Administration itself will be on the bench as subsidiary civil liability, given the status of charges and officials of those involved.

Two police commanders whom the examining magistrate, Manuel García Castellón, proposed to judge have, however, been exonerated. Prosecutors do not see “sufficient indications” to accuse them, although other personal accusations could, such as Podemos and the PSOE.

The former general secretary of the PP María Dolores de Cospedal came to be investigated in the case, but the judge ruled out sending her to trial and the Criminal Chamber of the Hearing ratified its decision against the appeal of the Prosecutor’s Office. This same Friday, the Chamber that reviews the judge’s decisions has also rejected the appeal of Podemos along the same lines.

At the start of his writing, the Prosecutor’s Office winks at the possible participation in the Kitchen operation of other people, not necessarily from the police sphere. It lists the names of the eight finally accused, adding: “without the intervention of other people from different instances being able to be ruled out.”

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