The plot orchestrated in the Ministry of the Interior, whose head was Jorge Fernandéz Díaz, tried to implicate the head of the Mossos d’Esquadra from 2013 to 2017, Major Josep Lluís Trapero, in a case of drug trafficking, in a of the assemblies that were part of the so-called operation Catalonia against the process.
According to some of the information notes drawn up by Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo between July and September 2013, and sent to the operational management of the Police and the Ministry of the Interior itself, the objective was that the head of the court of instruction number 1 of Barcelona, ??Joaquín Aguirre, impeached the head of the Mossos. It was the case known as the Macedonia case, in which several agents of that force were tried to be charged for their alleged involvement in the use of money from drug trafficking to pay confidants and for his own profit, with Trapero always as his main objective. As a result of the actions of the patriotic police, Judge Aguirre ended up sending Mossos sub-inspector Josep Ranea to provisional prison, who, in addition, was suspended from work and pay for a year and a half.
In the end, it was all a fiasco. The investigation of the affair lasted a decade and the judgment of the trial, in 2022, dictated an acquittal for all those involved.
As can be read in the documents to which El Diario has had access and which accompany this information, the plot of Interior tried to involve in the matter the highest responsible of the Mossos, in the middle of the process, and for this reason it approached some agent of the Catalan security force to seek their complicity and advance in the “maneuver to penetrate TRIPI’s circle of trust” (Trapero).
In the reports, this collaborator is identified as M and his claim is to strengthen “relations with his enemies [of Trapero], who, apart from Manos Limpias, is Judge Aguirre”. In the same reports, Trapero is accused of “participating in meetings” to “strengthen the sovereignist plan”.
According to these documents, a person from the field of private security, M , acted as an infiltrator: “He continues to enrich his relations with Fernando Martínez Iglesias, lawyer who brings the accusation of Manos Limpias in the matter of court number 1, which affects the imputations of Trapero and his team, and also with Albert Rivera and Jordi Cañas, president and spokesperson of Ciutadans, with whom a good relationship is being consolidated, which can be dimensioned in the best possible way”.
In reality, the network of corrupt police officers who tried to manipulate the Macedonia case had already been pursuing Major Trapero since 2009. That year, the Mossos officer, who at the time was intendant and deputy head of criminal investigation of the force, headed the dismantling of a group of corrupt policemen who received bribes from the managers and owners of two large brothels in Castelldefels, Saratoga and Riviera, in exchange for protection and warnings of possible interventions by the security forces.
As a result of that investigation, several high-ranking police officers linked to Commissioner Villarejo ended up being denounced, dismissed and convicted; at the head of UDEF and other bodies, José Luis Olivera and Antonio Giménez Raso, ex-inspector, right-hand man of the former in Catalonia. All three, by the way, investigated in the framework of the Tandem case that is being investigated at the National Court.
For this reason, the patriotic police saw in the Macedonian case and in the process a possibility of passing the bill to Trapero. In 2016, the police included in the information processing support group (Gati), which records ongoing investigations, the following reference against the head of the Catalan police: “The family is protected by the current head of the Mossos d “Esquadra, Mr. Trapero, in his issues of ‘drug trafficking'”.
The maneuvers of those policemen against Trapero and some agents were denounced in 2021 by the Mossos before the play number 6 of the National Court directed by Manuel García-Castellón, which instructs the Tàndem macro case against Villarejo and his partners. The magistrate, however, ruled out that there were connections between what happened in Barcelona and his instructions, so he refused to investigate the matter and also did not comment on whether the actions of those policemen could be a crime .
Trapero was charged in a case linked to the referendum of October 1, 2017, in which he was initially accused of rebellion, later downgraded to sedition, and was asked to serve ten years in prison. He was finally acquitted by the National Court in October 2020. After the sentence, he was again the chief commissioner of the Mossos, until the end of 2021. Trapero is currently head of the general police station in inspection and evaluation.
