The National Court has started today the trial for the first piece of the Villarejo case, in which the former commissioner of the Barajas airport Carlos Salamanca sits on the dock along with the man who uncovered this alleged network of police corruption in which Former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo is at the head.
The operation being prosecuted was the first thread that investigators pulled to unravel this organization, which has unraveled a dark era in Spain, splashing the king of Spain himself, the emeritus Juan Carlos I.
The lawyer and contractor Francisco Menéndez was a man who ended up denouncing all the payments he made to Villarejo, whom he met through Salamanca. His “compadre” had opened the door to a commissioner who had the utmost personal and professional respect for him.
Before arriving in Villarejo, Menéndez explained that he entertained Salamanca with trips to watches, cars and even the heating of the pool. “It was a bottomless pit of money,” a “cash cow.” The objective: to achieve benefits to help their clients from Equatorial Guinea have certain privileges to enter Spain without problems.
The complainant quickly understood that all these efforts were not free. “There are many ways to ask for money, your honor.” In the case of Salamanca, financial help came from his complaints about his police salary. Salamanca has categorically denied it. He has exposed his multiple decorations, his police or anti-terrorist knowledge that would have opened the door to any private company if he had wanted. “But my life is the police,” he said amid regrets for having been removed from the force after his arrest for this matter.
According to the Anti-Corruption indictment, Salamanca picked up the Equatorial Guinean partners upon their arrival in Madrid on the plane steps and transported them in official vehicles to the exit of the airport, to remove them from the mandatory surveillance and customs control of Spain and therefore both from the European Union.
Menéndez ended up denouncing Salamanca and Villarejo before the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, with the help of an anonymous complaint, feeling abandoned when they left him “stranded” in a tax problem that involved moving so much black money.
This former public defender, for whom the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office is requesting six months in prison for alleged crimes of active bribery and against the rights of foreign citizens, has acknowledged in his statement as an accused that he “golden the pill” for Salamanca, whom “He loved being loved like that.” “He was a lover of luxury, as I was too,” he added.
Salamanca, who faces 10 years in prison for the same crimes, has denied the higher sentence. As he told the court, when questioned by the prosecutor, Menéndez did not pay him for the services provided but because they were practically family. Menéndez, who describes himself as a “pagafantas”, even paid the commissioner’s son 25,000 euros to his daughter for the wedding.
For Salamanca, it was an act of friendship. The commissioner had, according to his version, other details with the businessman, but above all “affection”, like the one that no one had given to Menéndez before, as Salamanca believed.
It was convenient for Menéndez to have this friendship. He himself has told the Court that Salamanca was a super important man “because of” the number of contacts he had. “With a single call he reached any place of the most important powers of the State. For me that was like knowing God practically. He wasn’t going to stop taking care of him. “If he took care of me, I took care of him,” he said.
The complainant and accused have recounted multiple meals at a Madrid restaurant, Casa Piluca, where the commissioners met, as well as politicians, lawyers, businessmen and even judges. And always, according to his story, he ended up paying for everyone. Meals without restrictions: Vega Sicilia wines, Macallan whiskeys, Cohiba cigars, parties with gypsies, flamencas and cash.
That relationship, which strengthened over time, opened the business to Menéndez until Villarejo, whom he commissioned the so-called ‘King project’ to help him resolve a conflict between the Obiang family. Everything was going well until they abandoned him when he had problems. Since he filed the complaint and it fell, this police network has been afraid. “These gentlemen… have tentacles that reach deep into all the powers of the State: judicial, executive, legislative, police… Anyway, where have I gotten myself? Well, you see where I am, accused by everyone sides, completely ruined. Absolutely ruined and very fucked up,” he lamented.
