The phenomenon Sálvame has punctured. This Friday was her last program after 14 years on the air. The format that revolutionized the after-dinner television grid disappears, but its protagonists will not completely separate: they will continue to be united by an open legal case, the so-called Operation Moon. Also known as Operación Deluxe, it has the producer of the program, La Fábrica de la Tele, on a war footing with dozens of famous people who seek to demand justice —or obtain economic profit— for the publication of confidential information obtained by collaborators of the program through through a police officer who accessed the confidential database.
From the investigation it has been possible to obtain data from up to 160 public figures, although not all of them were discussed on the television program. Most of the information the cop was looking for in the police files had to do with his criminal record, though he also looked at license plate numbers and addresses. But the key to all of this, which is now being studied by the judge and prosecutor, is whether the policeman charged for providing that information and whether the disclosure of secrets, in the case of the journalist, is justified by a right to information.
After six years, the case remains open and stagnant due to the flood of celebrities who seek to further expand the investigation in search of possible compensation. According to legal sources, most of the claims are being rejected while sources close to the defenses believe that there is an economic interest in this latest maneuver.
Within a month, the term of the instruction will end. Then, the head of the Investigating Court 4 of Madrid must decide if he extends the investigation or if he concludes it, to determine who is finally prosecuted and for what crimes.
The cause began in April 2017. An Internal Affairs agent is watching the Sálvame program on Telecinco and looks at how one of his collaborators, Mila Ximénez, advances in the program that the son of the bullfighter Ortega Cano had been arrested for assaulting a a policeman. The journalist gave details of the police report opened after the arrest. The Internal Affairs agent thought that was something serious. The police report is a confidential document and Ximénez had access to it. Who had passed it on?
The question was quickly answered because any agent who enters one of the Police databases leaves a trace. Access is not anonymous and is reflected in the search history. The official in question was Ángel Jesús Fernández Hita, a police officer from the Madrid Citizen Security Police Station. From Internal Affairs, a disciplinary file could have been opened against the uniformed officer or even denounced him, but nevertheless it was decided to go further. They wanted to know the magnitude of these leaks and get their hands on the practices of the “pink” or “heart” press. Thus began the police hunt against Sálvame and the ‘mole’ of him.
In a first sweep they discover that Fernández Hita has looked at data on public figures: Kiko Hernández, Aida Nízar, Alex Casademunt, Lucía Dominguín, Fidel Albiac, Isabel Pantoja or David Bustamante. What the police officer did not know is that for a year he was being closely monitored by investigators.
The Investigative Unit put all the meat on the grill. They discovered that there was a favorite journalist for Hita: Gustavo González, a regular contributor to Sálvame. Internal Affairs employed several agents to monitor this duo for months and tap their communications until it culminated in October 2018 with their arrest and search of their homes and offices, with the intervention of their phones, computers and storage devices. The bulk of the police photographic report, which appears in the summary to which La Vanguardia has had access, is limited to meetings between the two at the bar in front of Mediaset, where the collaborators used to meet after the program.
Was Hita a source for González or an undercover worker for the production company La Fábrica de la Tele? This was the doubt of the agents. Did Hita charge for the services rendered? Of course, without any doubt, Hita was the main source of González. According to what he recounted after his arrest, they had known each other for many years for personal reasons. The journalist’s first wife was the teacher of the policeman’s daughters. From there they established a friendship to such an extent that the official was invited to the reporter’s silver anniversary. Researchers don’t see it that way. They believe that there is a relationship of mutual interest and base their suspicions on the age difference between them (12 years) and the lack of friends or relatives in common, in addition to living in different parts of Madrid. It doesn’t bother them that when they were on vacation they didn’t call each other.
In a police report collected in the case, Internal Affairs maintains that it is not the agent who offers information, not even the collaborator of the program on his own initiative, but that it is the same leadership of La Fábrica de la Tele that is “promoting the search and obtaining reserved intimate information”. They are based on the fact that it was the editors of Sálvame who on occasion asked González to confirm certain news or obtain information “through his sources”.
The producer’s defenses categorically deny that they knew who the collaborator’s source was and even less that they paid him for the data. They base their defense on what is the normal operation of journalistic work: reporters who work with their sources to obtain information of interest. And that is why they have requested the dismissal of the case.
What emerges from the investigation is that Hita liked salseo, being close to celebrities, rubbing shoulders with them, going to meals and being called. The agents themselves acknowledge in one of their reports that the policeman “seemed to settle for the enjoyment of interacting with celebrities (…) It can be seen from the conversations how the treatment between the policeman and collaborators is certainly friendly, the policeman enjoying food in company of these people.” Investigators have tried to tie up the crime of bribery throughout all these years. The judge will have to assess whether invitations to meals, beers and a drink is enough to show that the official received or received gifts for the information.
There is a WhatsApp conversation that makes the two friends more complicated. In it, Hita asks him to “give her a hand.” “I need 500 bucks and I owe you a lot.” González responds with “you don’t owe me anything, I’ll get the 500 tomorrow. Don’t worry angel.”
In the opinion of the investigators, “it seems obvious” that there was a lucrative purpose in this transfer of information, based on evidence such as a conversation in which a program editor asked Gustavo González for information on more details of the arrest of a public figure to “sell” to the audience that they have all the details of the case. In journalistic jargon, that “sell” does not imply money but the offer on a possible topic of interest to publish or broadcast.
“Let’s see if you can look at Chabelita’s boyfriend, who has told me he’s a piece of shit.” In this conversation, González and Hita already had their phones tapped by the Police. From the program they had asked the journalist to see if he could get information from Omar Montes because they had received information that he had had problems with the Justice. González calls his source to ask him to look at what he has so he can tell it on the program. Shortly after, the policeman had already made the arrangements: “he has everything, mistreatment, fights and fights and everything, a gift…”. He continues to tell her that he has been detained four or five times.
With the police file in her possession, Hita goes to the bar across from Mediaset and meets González to give him the information. Once with the report in hand, the journalist “sold” them (he told what he had) to the program.
The reporter Kike Calleja chases maestro Joao with a microphone, former contestants on Survivors (also on Telecinco) to ask him a question live and put him on the ropes. If the rumors that he had been arrested were true. Behind this question there was a previous work. The program asks González to get information about it and Calleja, in turn -also knows Fernández Hita-, makes his own efforts.
The police who are on the trail of the ‘mole’ follow up and tap the telephone, and discover that due to the positioning of the telephone terminals, Hita was with Calleja and the collaborator Terelu Campos the day before the publication of the information about Joao. This character is one more than a hundred that the instructor Marcelino Sexmero has offered to appear in the case as victims of the disclosure of secrets under investigation.
In this case, it was Mila Ximénez – who died in 2021 – who asked Hita, already retired, for help. June 2018. The journalist finds out that her partner and friend Mónica Gil, known as the celebrity scammer, has been arrested. Ximénez is afraid that during her interrogation he named her.
Everyone wants to tell the details of the arrest and statement, they are very juicy data to give it live in Sálvame. In fact, Ximénez even recounts her experience with her.
Despite the fact that Fernández Hita should have been considered a “source” of them and therefore, maintain the journalistic right and duty to protect sources, he admitted to the agents that on some occasion he had asked him for information on criminal records of any guest on the show. However, he defined him as a “friend” with whom he had shared – even together with his wife – meetings and meals.
In this case, the information provided by the police officer to Gustavo González is not for journalistic interest but to help his partner, María Lapiedra, with a conflict with her ex-partner over custody of the children. The information obtained was then passed on to the Method 3 private detective hired by the couple. In that season, González’s “cache” was uploaded on television due to his appearances to talk about his relationship with the actress. The agents came to investigate this economic increase on suspicion that it could be related to the information obtained by Fernández Hita.
The background of the story is that it deals with the tabloids, the gossip press and therefore the frivolity of the topics, although in some cases they tried to obtain information about the murderer Ana Julia Quezada for the murder of little Gabriel Cruz, about the Farruquito’s companion with whom he was in the vehicle when he fatally ran over a man, or other characters with legal problems.
However, this matter opens the debate on the protection of journalists and the proportionality of carrying out police surveillance of a communication professional, telephone tapping, house searches and the intervention of their electronic material, such as mobile phones and computers. The great judicial dilemma is whether interference in journalistic work is justified and, therefore, the first thing to do will be to analyze whether in this case, and being a “pink” press, it should be equally protected and for this it will be necessary to determine the interests that the journalists had. journalists with the information obtained.
The Constitutional Court concluded, in the case of the wiretapping of journalists from the Balearic Islands -in this case they were not judicially investigated- that “the protection of journalistic sources, also known as the guarantee of journalists’ professional secrecy has been categorized as by the European Court of Human Rights as one of the cornerstones of press freedom, on the grounds that the absence of such protection may deter sources from helping the press to inform the public on issues of general interest”. the information of Sálvame of general interest?
