For the first time, a Spanish judicial instance has opened a criminal case against some of the main parties involved in actions of the State sewers for events exclusively linked to the so-called Operation Catalonia, a political, police, judicial and media network aimed at fabricating false evidence to open cases in the courts against people allegedly linked to the independence process, resorting to a varied repertoire of illegal means and using public resources, both financial and material. This information is part of a joint investigation into Operation Catalunya by La Vanguardia and Crónicalibre.com.
Until now, all the open investigations have been limited to the private businesses of the main people involved in this plot, the best known being commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, and in the operation to obstruct the work of justice in the investigation of the Gürtel case, the great case of corruption of the PP; but never in relation to the dirty war in Catalonia. And from the Supreme Court to the National Court they had rejected, for various reasons, the complaints filed by those affected.
This has also been the case of a lawsuit by the businessman and former Barça president Sandro Rosell, imprisoned for two years to be finally acquitted, until it has finally been admitted for processing in the investigating court number 13 in Madrid.
Judge Hermenegildo Barrera has considered that the facts described in the complaint “lead to presume the possible existence of crimes by criminal organizations: falsification of an official in an official document, false accusation and complaint, embezzlement of public funds and illegal arrests,” according to his car from last October 27.
In that same resolution, the judge asked the Madrid Provincial Prosecutor’s Office to rule on whether or not the court was competent to investigate the facts denounced. And this has finally done so just two weeks ago and in a positive sense, something also unprecedented in relation to Operation Catalunya.
As a consequence, in this first direct case on the plot to end the process, the aforementioned Villarejo is being investigated; Chief Inspector Alberto Estévez, alleged author of a good number of the famous false reports of the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police; Antonio Giménez Raso, former inspector and partner of Villarejo in Barcelona; and the American Marc L. Varri, former FBI agent. The magistrate has issued a resolution a few days ago asking the judicial police to provide him with the addresses of the defendants “for the continuation of the investigation (…) and in his case, taking the statements of those investigated.”
The public prosecution considers that the judge of the National Court Manuel García Castellón, who is instructing the bulk of the Villarejo case, the Tándem case, focuses on “private contracting by José Manuel Villarejo through the Cenyt group [the central company of the business of the ex-commissioner] to provide services that he could not carry out given his status as an active police officer and sometimes with the use of investigative means restricted to the State security forces and bodies, which crystallizes through a commission or project, under budget and payment of a price for such illegal activity”. That was at least the argument used by the head of Court number 6 of the National High Court to reject at the time to incorporate Rosell’s complaint into his case, represented by the Molins law firm.
For this reason, the Madrid prosecutor’s office argues that since the Catalan businessman’s complaint does not refer to those private businesses commissioned by individuals and “they have nothing to do with the facts denounced by Rosell since it alludes to other people, in addition to Villarejo, without any connection to the facts followed in the proceedings in question.”
