The recording library of ex-commissioner José Manuel Villarejo looks like the Milky Way, infinite. Placed in the proper context, they reveal their murky way of proceeding and also reveal the no less dark political intentions of the politicians who were their traveling companions.
First of all, they highlight the use of dirty war methods by the last government of the PP, that of Mariano Rajoy, to try to “politically kill Pedro Sánchez” already when he was only secretary general of the PSOE, in the summer of 2014. And they exhibit the tools used: the police, illegal surveillance and prospective investigations, intrusion into the private lives of targets, the spread of rumors and the final resort to sinister far-right organizations such as Manos Limpias to open court cases no known crimes. These recordings have been in the hands of the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office for more than two years, which has always ruled out investigating a case of possible extortion against a high-ranking political official who, when the facts became known, was already president of the.
The conversation between Villarejo and the then Secretary of State for Security, Francisco Martínez, the right-hand man of the Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, is becoming topical these days. It is the summer of 2014. The policeman explains to the PP politician the progress in his inquiries to investigate the life of the family, in this case the father, of Begoña Gómez, the wife of the then general secretary of the PSOE and today president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez. And they agree to allocate resources and more police to continue investigating.
Begoña Gómez’s father was attributed the ownership of several saunas where prostitution was allegedly practiced, and in their meeting, Villarejo and Martínez came to the conclusion that the revelation of this fact would expose and destroy the career Sánchez’s policy, following the feminist agenda that was promoted by the Socialist Party.
Regarding the veracity or otherwise of the attributions made by the police, in the recording it is felt as if the latter nuances, carelessly, that the ownership of these businesses belongs to the older brother and not to the father of Begoña Gómez.
The recording is part of the vast material compiled by La Vanguardia and ElDiario.es in the course of the joint investigation into Operation Catalonia, an illegal assembly deployed by the government of Mariano Rajoy at least between 2012 and 2016 , against the process in Catalonia to discredit, cower and prosecute, with false assemblies or obtaining evidence with prohibited methods, independence leaders and people he considered to be in his orbit, most of the time without foundation.
The two interlocutors consider that what they know about the activities of Sánchez’s father-in-law will mean the end of the latter:
-Francisco Martínez: “It’s that, besides, it would kill anyone. But a left-wing guy who goes with the roll flag, this feminist, very feminist, and he has everything full of Polish women eating cicadas in a sauna”.
– Villarejo: “Mortal, Paco, when I found out about it, imagine, I was shocked…!”.
-Francisco Martínez: “But you need to know everything”.
The commissioner proposes to use his classic methods, profusely deployed in the Catalonia operation: divulging the alleged revelations in the middle of the election campaign. As had already been done then with the non-existent accounts of Pujol in Switzerland and would be done later, a few days before the voting in the elections of November 25, 2012, when he published alleged accounts of the family of former president Jordi Pujol in Geneva, with 137 million euros, and soon after attributing others in Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the latter and also to the then president and candidate Artur Mas:
-Francisco Martínez: “And Sánchez knows this for sure? He knows perfectly well what his father-in-law is doing.”
Villarejo: “Yes, of course, you’ll explain it to me, imagine if it’s a weak part of the design, that’s deadly. This is deadly. This is deadly. This is for when necessary, but it is a matter for you to discuss only with the president [Mariano Rajoy] and with number 1 [Jorge FernándezDíaz]. This kills him. Let’s see, we have to wait for it to be the call for elections and it’s a missile in the float”.
-Francisco Martínez: “This breaks him”.
In addition, Villarejo informed Martínez that he was organizing to see the father of Begoña Gómez to deepen his inquiries and in order to obtain more information about the relationships between the different members of the political family of the then General Secretary of the PSOE :
– Villarejo: “In September I told him to stay for lunch with him, he stays for lunch with me, because I want to meet my father-in-law”.
-Francisco Martínez: “Why do they continue with the business?”.
– Villarejo: “Esclar, if it’s a motherfucker’s business, it’s a piece of cake, then the owner is still the biggest, it’s all in the name of the biggest… but then there are two more for below, the father-in-law and another one there, I do know this one physically because he is very fat, very fat. These are the people responsible, those who were in charge, let’s say, and this is the story.”
The material prepared by Villarejo about Sánchez’s father-in-law was used profusely for years by a galaxy of digital media and the most recent reference to these negotiations came this week from the mouth of Ester Muñoz, a deputy secretary of the PP, who in the course of ‘a press conference in a room of Congress said: “We have the scandals surrounding the Prime Minister, here we have his father-in-law, who is getting rich with those saunas, we all know what kind of saunas I’m referring to… “.
But the services you offered that the Secretary of State received with interest were not limited to that. The police included in the package the proposal to use the Manos Limpias syndicate to present to the courts complaints with almost no content to destabilize or complicate the lives of their targets.
A way of operating that is very similar to the one that has been put into practice again with the complaint filed against Begoña Gómez for the alleged influence peddling and corruption in business, the veracity of which they even doubt the complainants, which has not been an obstacle for the court of inquiry number 41 of Madrid to have admitted it to proceedings.
In the conversation between Villarejo and Martínez in the summer of 2014, the references to Manos Limpias always go in the same direction: the police show off arresting the ultra-right group.
Firstly, with reference to Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, the former president of the PP of Catalonia and currently deputy in the Community of Madrid and senator and Villarejo’s primary source in the Catalonia operation.
In this reference to Sánchez-Camacho, Villarejo explains that other agents linked to Operation Catalunya would use her through Manos Limpias, something that his intervention managed to avoid.
The second mention is also linked to the same case and Martínez asks the policeman what his situation was and if any personalization had been formalized in the judicial inquiry. Villarejo, sarcastic and direct, replied that in this case “we take into account Manos Limpias”. They complement the many references to the fascist organization that appear in Villarejo’s handwritten journal entries.
Years later, Manos Limpias, still managed by Miguel Bernad y Villarejo, would end up facing each other in court cases.
Manos Limpias, which refers to itself as a union of civil servants, despite the fact that it lacks minimal representation, does not hold congresses or publish accounts, was out of action after the National Court sentenced it in July 2021 to five years of prison for extortion from companies for not reporting them in court or launching a discredit campaign against them. Luis Pineda, president of Ausbanc, was also convicted in the same case.
However, just over a month ago, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court unanimously annulled this sentence and left those convicted by the Court without charge. Once cleared by the Supreme Court, just one month later, Bernad and his family filed the complaint against Begoña Gómez.
Manos Limpias has been the perfect useful and functional complement to almost every political dirty war operation, bringing to court, as a popular accusation, countless allegations.
In its already long existence, Manos Limpias has gone to court against the president of the central government, Pablo Iglesias, Artur Mas and Pere Aragonès, the latter for language policy, always with the same result, the rejection of the judges.
He denounced Podemos for alleged irregular information using as an argument the false PISA report, prepared by Les clavegueres de l’Estat. He has sued for the approval of homosexual marriage or put his head against the satirical magazine Mongolia, demands that were also rejected. But sometimes it has succeeded in opening the door for the opening of judicial cases of high political importance, among the most notable, the complaint against the Bureau of the Basque Parliament for allowing the political activity of the illegal Herri Batasuna.
