The recording archive of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo seems like the Milky Way, infinite. Placed in the proper context, they reveal not only his shady actions, but also the no less dark political intentions of the politicians who were his traveling companions.
Firstly, they reveal the use of dirty war methods by the last PP Government, that of Mariano Rajoy, to try to “politically kill Pedro Sánchez” when he was only general secretary of the PSOE, in the summer of 2014. And it shows the tools used: the police, illegal prospective monitoring and investigations, interference in the private lives of the targets, the spread of rumors and the final resort to sinister far-right organizations such as Clean Hands to open judicial cases without known crimes. These recordings have been in the hands of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office for more than two years, which has always ruled out investigating a case of possible extortion of a high-ranking political official who, when the facts became known, was already President of the Government.
The conversation between Villarejo and the then Secretary of State for Security of the Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, is becoming topical these days. It is in the summer of 2014. The police officer explains to the PP politician the progress in his investigations to investigate the life of the family, in this case the father, of Begoña Gómez, the wife of the then general secretary of the PSOE and today president of the Government , Pedro Sánchez. And they agree to allocate resources and more police to continue investigating.
Begoña Gómez’s father was attributed the ownership of various saunas in which prostitution was supposedly practiced and in their meeting Villarejo and Martínez came to the conclusion that the revelation of this fact would expose and destroy Sánchez’s political career. attending to the feminist agenda that she promoted in the socialist party.
Regarding the veracity or not of the attributions made by the police officer, in the recording you can hear how he clarifies, carelessly, that the ownership of those businesses belongs to the older brother and not to Begoña Gómez’s father.
The recording is part of the enormous material collected by La Vanguardia and eldiario.es in the course of their joint investigation into the Catalunya operation, an illegal setup deployed by the Government of Mariano Rajoy at least between 2012 and 2016, against the process in Catalonia. with the aim of discrediting, intimidating and prosecuting, with false setups or obtaining evidence with prohibited methods, pro-independence leaders and people considered to be in their orbit, most of the time without foundation.
The two interlocutors consider that what they know about the activities of Sánchez’s father-in-law will mean the end of him:
The commissioner proposes using his classic methods, widely deployed in the Catalunya operation: disclosing the alleged revelations in the middle of the electoral campaign. As had already been done at that time with Pujol’s non-existent accounts in Switzerland and would be done later, a few days before the voting in the elections of November 25, 2012, when El Mundo published alleged accounts from the family of former president Jordi Pujol in Geneva, with 137 million euros and shortly after attributing others in Switzerland and Liechtenstein to him and also to the then president and candidate Artur Mas:
Furthermore, Villarejo informed Martínez that he was organizing a meeting with Begoña Gómez’s father to deepen his investigations and in order to obtain more information about the relationships between the different members of the political family of the then general secretary of the PSOE:
The material prepared by Villarejo about Sánchez’s father-in-law was used profusely for years by a galaxy of digital media and the most recent reference to those businesses has come this week from the mouth of Ester Muñoz, a deputy secretary of the PP, who in the course of In a press appearance in a Congress room he said: “We have the scandals surrounding the president of the government, there we have his father-in-law who enriches himself with those saunas, we all know what type of saunas I am referring to…”.
But the services that Villarejo offered and that the Secretary of State received with interest were not limited to that. The police officer included in the package the proposal to use the Clean Hands union to present complaints in court with hardly any content to destabilize or complicate the lives of his targets.
A way of operating that is very similar to the one that has once again been put into practice with the complaint filed against Begoña Gómez for alleged influence peddling and corruption in business, the veracity of which even the complainants doubt, which has not been an obstacle. so that the investigating court number 41 of Madrid has admitted it for processing.
In the conversation between Villarejo and Martínez in the summer of 2014, the references to Clean Hands always go in the same direction; The policeman makes a show of having the far-right group under control.
Firstly in reference to Alicia Sánchez Camacho, the former president of the PP of Catalonia and currently a deputy in the Community of Madrid and senator and Villarejo’s primary source in the Catalunya operation.
In this reference to Sánchez Camacho, Villarejo explains that other agents linked to Operation Catalunya were going to use it through Clean Hands, something that his intervention managed to avoid.
The second mention is also linked to the same case and Martínez asks the police officer what his situation was and if any appearance had been formalized in the judicial investigation. Villarejo, concise and direct, responded that in this case “we are handling Clean Hands.” They complement the many references to the fascist organization that appear in the handwritten notes of Villarejo’s diary.
Years later, Clean Hands, which Miguel Bernad still directs, and Villarejo would end up facing legal cases.
Clean Hands, which refers to itself as a civil servants union, despite lacking minimal representation, not holding congresses or publishing accounts, was left out of action after the National Court sentenced it to five years in prison in July 2021. for extortion of companies so as not to denounce them in court or launch a smear campaign. Luis Pineda, president of Ausbanc, was also convicted in the same case.
However, a little over a month ago, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court unanimously annulled that sentence and left those convicted by the Court without charges. Once they were whitewashed by the Supreme Court, just a month later, Bernad and his people filed the complaint against Begoña Gómez.
Clean Hands has been the perfect useful and functional complement to almost all political dirty war operations, bringing countless complaints to the courts, as a popular accusation.
In its long existence, Clean Hands has gone to court against the President of the Government, Pablo Iglesias, Artur Mas or Pere Aragonès, the latter for linguistic policy, always with the same result, the rejection of the judges.
He denounced Podemos for alleged irregular information using as an argument the false PISA report, prepared by the state sewers. He has complained about the approval of homosexual marriage or has targeted the satirical magazine Mongolia, demands that have also been rejected. But on some occasions he has managed to open the door for the opening of judicial cases of high political significance; among the most notable, the complaint against the Basque Parliament table for allowing the political activity of the banned Herri Batasuna.
