The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office has already put in black and white the prison sentences it requests for all those involved in the Wine case, the espionage work that Repsol and CaixaBank allegedly commissioned former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo to investigate attempted takeover of the oil company by Sacyr and Pemex. The one in the worst position – as in the rest of the pieces investigated by the National Court – is again the policeman at the epicenter of the whole plot, for whom the public ministry is requesting 40 and a half years in prison.
In its indictment, dated Monday, Anticorruption attributes to Villarejo the following array of crimes for this alleged dirty job: passive bribery, active bribery, discovery and disclosure of private secrets with dissemination to third parties committed by a public official, discovery and disclosure of private secrets and falsity in commercial documents. The ex-commissioner, who is free at the moment, is still waiting to hear his first sentence from the National Court, where he was tried for the first three assignments. The Prosecutor’s Office is asking for more than 80 years in prison.
In this matter, the Wine case, the thesis developed by Anticorruption over the course of 15 folios dates back to August 2011, when Sacyr Vallehermoso, then chaired by Luis del Rivero, and the Mexican company Pemex reached an agreement regarding the ‘exercise their right to vote in a syndicated way at the Spanish oil company. This allowed that, adding the participation of both companies, they would come to control almost a third of the total. It was then, as reported by the Prosecutor’s Office, when “Repsol’s top managers adopted different measures”: one of which was to gather information about this pact, and for this they used their Corporate Security department , at the front of which were the defendants Rafael Araujo and Rafael Girona, for whom the Prosecutor’s Office has asked for more than 20 years in prison.
The public ministry indicates that both, “to comply with the mandate of their superiors”, contacted Villarejo in October 2011. And they did it, always according to the prosecutor’s report, “knowing that he was in active service as a commissioner of the National Police Force and that he could use this condition”. Thus, they would have entrusted him with an investigation initially aimed at gathering all possible information about Luis del Rivero, including that related to his actions regarding the pact that, as president of Sacyr Vallehermoso, he had reached with Grupo Pemex to take facto control of Repsol. CaixaBank would have been added to this assignment, as Repsol’s reference shareholder, doing so through the defendant Miguel Ángel Fernández in his capacity as Director of Security. For the latter, the Prosecutor’s Office requests 21 years.
That is why Cenyt issued three invoices and collected 389,400 euros, an amount paid in equal parts by the two companies. These invoices stated “different services to those actually provided, and in this way the reality of the commercial relationship that the parties had maintained”, recalls Anticorruption.
The judge in charge of the case at the National Court, Manuel García Castellón, came to charge the current president of Repsol, Antonio Brufau, and the former president of CaixaBank, Isidre Fainé. However, he finally filed the case against them months ago after realizing that neither of them had any contact with Cenyt. In the words of the instructor, they did not give the order to “hire” the ex-commissioner nor did they know the “details” of the services he could have provided.
Anticorruption also points out in its letter that both Repsol and CaixaBank and the State Administration must sit in the dock and be sentenced as subsidiary civil liability.
