A court of inquiry in Madrid is investigating – under secret summary – two agents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) for allegedly leaking classified information to the United States, as Defense Minister Margarita Robles confirmed yesterday. The spies were arrested a few weeks ago for an alleged crime of revealing secrets, punishable by a maximum of 12 years in prison. It is not the first case of betrayal by Spanish spies; but unlike the previous one, this time the sensitive information would have been supplied to an allied country: the intelligence services of the United States.
The legal process began in the Plaça de Castilla courts after the CNI itself filed a complaint against its investigated agents. Once the matter was brought to court, the arrests of the spies were carried out; one of them was sent to provisional prison. The case is under summary secrecy. That is why the head of Defense did not advance more details on this issue that the Central Government has wanted to deal with with the utmost discretion. From the House – as the headquarters of the CNI is known – they suspect that the information has come to light through a leak from the court that coordinates the investigation.
In 2007, ex-agent Roberto Flórez, who worked in the CNI for a little over five years, was arrested for providing information to Russia, as it emerged from a document found in the searches of his home. In this letter he demanded the payment of 200,000 dollars in exchange for information reserved to a hostile country. Flórez became the first Spaniard convicted of a crime of treason in democracy. Article 584 of the Penal Code includes the punishment for “the Spaniard who, in order to favor a foreign power, association or international organization, procures, falsifies, makes useless or reveals information classified as reserved or secret, liable to harm national security or national defense”.
Intelligence sources explain that the unusual fact of the case is that the information was being leaked to a country with which Spain collaborates very closely in the exchange of information. If it were proven that the United States had bought Spanish spies, the same sources point out, we would be facing “a very serious event”.