The National Court will try from this Monday the alleged espionage operation known as ‘Kitchen’, which would have been organized in 2013 by the leadership of the Ministry of Interior during Mariano Rajoy's Government against the former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas. The objective, according to the investigation, was to obtain sensitive information related to the ‘Gürtel case’ that could affect the party and its leaders.
For these facts, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office requests 15 years in prison and 33 years of disqualification for the former Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Díaz, one of the ten accused, for alleged crimes of concealment, embezzlement and against privacy.
In its indictment, the Public Prosecutor's Office places the origin of the operation in the first half of 2013. "From the leadership of the Ministry of Interior, headed by Jorge Fernández Díaz, Francisco Martínez and Eugenio Pino, an illicit police intelligence operation was devised, without it being possible to rule out also the intervention of other people from different instances," the document states.
Anti-Corruption points out that the plot was "aimed at obtaining both information and material evidence that could turn out to be incriminating for the Popular Party and its top leaders" within the framework of the 'Gürtel case', which the National Court itself was investigating.
Specifically, the objective was to access the files that "might be in the possession of Bárcenas, who had held the position of party treasurer and was formally investigated in said case". "And all this with the purpose of preventing all that material, eventually incriminating for the Popular Party and its leaders who might be investigated, from being formally submitted to the aforementioned judicial procedure that was being followed in Central Investigating Court Number 5", adds the Prosecutor's Office.
In the alleged execution of this operation, commissioners José Manuel Villarejo, Marcelino Martín Blas and Enrique García Castaño would have also participated, as well as chief inspector Andrés Gómez Gordo, with the collaboration of Bárcenas's driver, Sergio Ríos.
They reported the information to the former Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz
According to Anticorruption, the then DAO, with "the full agreement" of Fernández Díaz and Martínez, contacted Ríos, who, due to his closeness to the Bárcenas family, had extensive knowledge of their movements and activities. The agreement implied that, between July 2013 and September 2015, he should report "in an exhaustive and individualized manner" about the meetings of the former treasurer and his wife.
As consideration, Ríos would have received 2,000 euros monthly charged to reserved funds, allegedly reaching around 54,000 euros, in addition to a weapons license and a pistol.
The mechanism described by the Prosecutor's Office indicates that Villarejo, García Castaño and Gómez Gordo transferred the information to Eugenio Pino and Francisco Martínez, who in turn "reported all this information to Fernández Díaz as the maximum head of the Ministry of Interior".
Finally, the indictment states that the defendants must jointly and severally compensate Bárcenas with 6,000 euros and his wife with 3,000 for the alleged espionage to their privacy, an amount for which the General State Administration would subsidiarily respond.
