Judge Manuel García Castellón, head of court number 6 of the National Court, has taken four years to clear the way for Jordi Pujol Ferrusola’s lawyers to appeal to the Court against his decision to reject his appearance as a victim in the Tándem case. , the macro-cause that investigates the adventures of Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo.
The lawyers Albert Carillo and Cristóbal Martell have presented the appeal that will lead to the court’s ruling and in which they argue that Villarejo participated in three types of crimes against Pujol Ferrusola: “intrusions into the home, cheap recruitment of witnesses allegedly from charge and preparation of false commercial documentation”, as police reports also attest.
Among them a report from the Internal Affairs Unit, which includes an information note prepared by the commissioner, “resulting from an investigation without a framework or judicial mandate by which findings and obtaining of banking data are attributed and which would be a consequence of coercive action. on bank executives [of the Banca Privada de Andorra (BPA)], criminal in that they would get them to reveal, without intervention or judicial authorization, banking data of the Pujol family.” Villarejo assumed authorship of that note in a notary office in Andorra.
The appeal is accompanied by the statements of Higini Cierco, then the first shareholder of BPA, in the courts of Andorra and in which he details the threats of the Spanish police demanding information about the Pujols and other pro-independence politicians, under penalty of losing the Bank of Madrid, its subsidiary in Spain.
It is not Villarejo’s only appearance in the case against the Pujols, the father, his wife Marta Ferrusola and their children. In fact, the investigation began in December 2012, in the midst of Operation Catalunya, with a complaint from Maria Victoria Álvarez, Pujol Ferrusola’s former lover, first before the police and later in court number five of the National Court. The complainant was instructed and taken to the judge, as well as paid, by Villarejo and other agents. Villarejo did the same with the convict Javier de la Rosa, but since he did not receive everything agreed upon, he backed out.
The then judge in charge of the case, Pablo Ruz, took a statement from Victoria Álvarez, along with the representative of the accused, the lawyer Javier Melero, and in view of her inconsistency, he issued the file. But the court revoked it and forced him to undergo an instruction to which the accounts in Andorra would later be added. This was the original sin of the matter, which was followed by a good number of irregularities, such as the attempt by the number two of the Police, the deputy operational director Eugenio Pino, to introduce adulterated evidence, in this case a pendrive, which cost him a sentenced to one year in prison.
García Castellón, with the support until now of the Prosecutor’s Office, has opposed this and other people with two arguments. The first, that in Tándem “the private hiring of the former commissioner is being investigated – through the Cenyt group [Villarejo’s company] – to provide services that he could not perform given his status as an active police officer and, on occasions, with the use of restricted investigative means. to the State security forces and bodies: it crystallized into an order or project under a budget and with payment of a price for such illicit activity.”
An argument that contradicts the fact that in the main case so far against Villarejo, the Kitchen case, an operation to obstruct the investigation of PP corruption, there is no financial charge. Supposedly, it implies considering any action by Villarejo legal, like most of those related to the Catalunya operation, as long as it is not proven that he received payment.
The second argument is that the crimes reported in Andorra are already being investigated in that country. The appellants argue that “there is no procedural obstacle to the investigation of openly criminal acts committed by Spanish citizens abroad.”
It is likely that both the Chamber and the prosecution will support the judge, although the latter has opened an investigation in Catalonia after the publication by La Vanguardia and eldiario.es of a list of people investigated without a court order that included the former chief prosecutor of that community Rodríguez Sun.
