The court number 6 of the National Court that investigates the so-called Tandem case, focused on the illegal activities of ex-commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, has lifted the secret of the summary of one of the separate pieces, the 34, of what is part of the recording in which the Mariano Rajoy government’s investigation into Pedro Sánchez’s father-in-law is included, published on Saturday April 27 by La Vanguardia.
In theory, the judge investigating the case, Manuel García-Castellón, issued the interlocutory order lifting the secrecy on April 18, that is to say, before Pedro Sánchez announced the five-day reflection period, all and which has not been communicated until this week.
This separate case was opened after the presentation of a complaint in court by businessman Javier Pérez Dolset, in May 2022, accompanied by a memory stick containing several dozen audios of Villarejo’s conversations with different people with whom the latter had met. Dolset is considered harmed by the activities of the commissioner on behalf of Planeta and that in 2017 he was sent to provisional prison by this same magistrate.
Despite the fact that almost two years have passed between the provision of these documents and the recent lifting of secrecy, no action is known to have been ordered by García-Castellón, beyond asking the General Directorate of the Police to transcribe the recordings.
The forty audios, the vast majority of which are already known, focus on conversations related to the dirty war activities of Villarejo and other police commands, as well as politicians responsible for the Ministry of the Interior, led by Jorge Fernández Díaz during the government of Mariano Rajoy.
Among others, several conversations include meetings in the summer of 2014 between the ex-commissioner and the then Secretary of the Interior, Francisco Martínez. In these conversations, they shared the inquiries about the alleged businesses of Begoña Gómez’s father, the father-in-law of Pedro Sánchez, and their conviction that the disclosure of these activities would mean the political end of Sánchez, then secretary general of the PSOE. Also Villarejo’s control of the self-styled syndicate Manos Limpias, author of many demands based on the false material supplied by the ex-commissioner to friendly media.
The PSOE, after Saturday’s publication, has asked the judge to charge Villarejo and Martínez for these facts.
Other audios refer to the so-called Operation Catalonia, an illegal dirty war operation against independence launched by the executive of Mariano Rajoy from September 2012. It was an investigation without judicial authorization or concrete evidence political leaders, businessmen and public figures with the argument that they were close to the independence movement. Although the private businesses of the police, especially Villarejo, were also involved in the affair.
The campaign was mainly articulated through the Ministry of the Interior and a group of agents known as the patriotic police, although the recordings also include references and conversations with the then General Secretary of the Popular Party and later Minister of Defense , María Dolores de Cospedal.
Other audios refer to actions in Andorra to try to locate possible accounts with undeclared money and which led to the intervention of the Private Bank of Andorra, a fact that is still the subject of a judicial investigation in the principality.
Finally, another audio block collects several conversations linked to the so-called Kitchen case, referring to the attempt by Mariano Rajoy’s government to obstruct the judicial investigation into box B, and the corruption of the Popular Party, the so-called Gürtel case, still pending trial.
