The Prosecutor’s Office has agreed to file the investigation opened in January into the espionage between 2012 and 2013 of the former top prosecutor of Catalonia Martín Rodríguez Sol by the so-called patriotic police of the National Police within the framework of Operation Catalunya, which La Vanguardia revealed .
The archive decree was signed by the current top prosecutor of Catalonia, Francisco Bañeres, on April 12, following a report from the National Police that ruled out any follow-up or investigation of Rodríguez Sol. However, the police admit that there are notes about the former senior prosecutor in the agendas of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo that are being investigated in the National Court.
From the actions carried out on the occasion of the pre-procedural proceedings, and as can be seen from the report of the General Commissioner of Judicial Police, who was entrusted with the investigation, “no data is inferred that would allow us to endorse the reality of said monitoring”, as well as like no other type of action in relation to Rodríguez Sol. According to the Office of Internal Affairs, whose seal appears on the note that justified the opening of the investigation, there is no record of any matter or information regarding the former senior prosecutor, and there is no trace any police actions in this regard.
On the other hand, the commissioned police unit reveals the existence of the so-called Tándem case in the National Court, in which explicit references to Rodríguez Sol would be found in the agendas seized from the main investigated, the former commissioner of the National Police José Manuel Villarejo. , along with many other people and entities. For this reason, the police point out that it would be within the framework of this other judicial investigation where new information about the events investigated could emerge.
The investigation by the prosecutor’s office was opened following journalistic information that indicated that what was known as the ‘patriotic police’ of the National Police during the time of President Mariano Rajoy investigated several Catalan personalities in ‘Operation Catalunya’, including Rodríguez Sol. During this period he had disagreements with the Spanish government. The prosecutor’s decree pointed out that crimes against privacy, prevarication and falsification of official documents could have been committed.
Regarding the former chief prosecutor, the police report pointed to his links with the UDC and the “commissions managed by this party’s lawyers.” Rodríguez Sol, considered to be from the conservative sector, was appointed chief prosecutor of Catalonia in July 2012 and resigned a little less than a year later, in March 2013 after not firmly opposing the right to decide. Rodríguez Sol ended up running for UDC in the 2015 Catalan elections, the last before the party’s liquidation. The top prosecutor opened proceedings against ‘El Mundo’ for having published, a week before the Catalan elections, a false report on the bank accounts of Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
According to journalistic information, the investigation that Rodríguez Sol wanted to open for information against Catalan politicians ended up turning against himself, and the reports would have ended up on the table of the then Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz. The Internal Affairs Unit of the National Police asked the minister to be able to investigate the then top prosecutor and other Catalan politicians and businessmen close to the independence movement. The document reached the minister through the Deputy Operational Directorate of the National Police, led by Commissioner Eugenio Pino. However, the report does not specify the dates of the investigation or what actions have been carried out.
According to the prosecutor’s decree that opened the proceedings, the unofficial police investigation had the objective of “discrediting” and “disturbing” Rodríguez Sol because he had expressed his intention to investigate alleged crimes committed by the Ministry of the Interior in the investigations against independence leaders. . To achieve these objectives, police investigations attributed crimes to the then senior prosecutor and used “false” data and information.
