The 'Kitchen case' is ready for sentencing after Villarejo's last word: "The truth will come to light"

The 'Kitchen case' trial has been adjourned for sentencing after 37 sessions and almost four months of statements, interrogations, and confrontations between the prosecution and the defense. The Audiencia Nacional must now decide whether the leadership of Mariano Rajoy's Ministry of Interior organized a clandestine operation in 2013 to spy on Luis Bárcenas and seize any documentation he might still possess regarding the irregular financing of the Popular Party.

José Manuel Villarejo used his final statement to present himself as a victim of the interests he had allegedly inconvenienced during his police career. "I still wonder how I managed to step on, let's say, such important toes to have ended up where I have ended up," said the retired commissioner before the court presided over by Teresa Palacios.

Villarejo faces the highest request from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which demands 19 years in prison for alleged crimes of concealment, embezzlement, against privacy, and passive bribery. The former commissioner concluded his intervention by proclaiming his confidence in judicial independence and assuring that "the truth will come to light."

The scope of the ruling will go far beyond his personal future. The magistrates must decide whether several of the main political and police officials of the Ministry of Interior used state resources to serve the interests of the PP, then hit by the Bárcenas papers and the progress of the judicial investigation into the Gürtel plot.

In the dock are the former minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, his former Secretary of State Francisco Martínez, and the former Deputy Operational Director of the Police Eugenio Pino. Anti-Corruption requests 15 years in prison for each of them, the same sentence requested for Andrés Gómez Gordo, commissioner and former advisor to María Dolores de Cospedal.

Villarejo tries to reduce the value of his own evidence

The agendas and recordings seized from the former commissioner have occupied a large part of the process. Villarejo has now tried to reduce the value of notes that for years have allowed the reconstruction of meetings, assignments, and conversations held within the police leadership.

"My notes were temporary, for use to remember at that moment, because there were so many things," he explained. "Right now I wouldn't even know how to explain why I wrote down certain things," he added before the magistrates.

The commissioner also defended that his recordings were part of his "functions as an intelligence agent" and lacked a "malicious" intention. He regretted the damage caused to those who appeared in those conversations, although he reduced their content to comments made in "relaxed environments."

His final word followed the strategy deployed on Monday by his lawyer, Antonio García Cabrera. The defense requested acquittal and maintained that the 'Kitchen case' was a construction by Bárcenas and "a group of journalists," while describing the operation as a legal operation to locate hidden assets and possible straw men of the former treasurer.

Andrés Gómez Gordo has also denied having participated in the "ideation or planning" of the operation. Cospedal's former advisor maintains that calling Sergio Ríos, Bárcenas's former chauffeur, "coci" also does not prove that he knew of any illegal action.

Ríos has asked for "clemency and justice" and has assured that he always believed he was collaborating with law enforcement agents within a legitimate operation. The Prosecutor's Office maintains that he was recruited as an informant, received 48,000 euros from reserved funds, and provided information about the movements and environment of the Bárcenas family.

Anticorruption demands for him 12 years and five months in prison and the annulment of his appointment as a police officer. Ríos denies having handed over documentation or electronic devices belonging to the former treasurer and rejects having participated in the alleged cloning of two mobile phones and an iPad carried out in a Madrid restaurant.

Two opposing versions on the use of the State

The Prosecutor's Office describes 'Kitchen' as a criminal parapolice operation conceived to recover compromising information for the PP and prevent it from reaching the Gürtel judicial procedure. According to their account, Fernández Díaz was at the top, Francisco Martínez acted as a political liaison, and the police leadership organized the surveillance and the recruitment of the chauffeur.

The defenses maintain a completely different explanation. They assure that the Police were investigating the money Bárcenas was hiding outside of Spain, his possible front men, and his family's financial movements. They admit the existence of an intelligence operation, but deny that its objective was to protect the PP or make evidence disappear.

Among the elements examined are Villarejo's diaries and audios, the messages exchanged between Fernández Díaz and Francisco Martínez, the payments made with reserved funds, and the surveillance of Bárcenas's surroundings. The court has also heard contradictory versions about the copying of his phones and the destination of the information obtained.

One of the most relevant testimonies was that of Manuel Morocho, the main police investigator of the 'Gürtel case'. The inspector declared that he detected an operation on Bárcenas and his family that lacked judicial authorization and recounted the pressures received to remove from his reports references to PP leaders such as Mariano Rajoy or María Dolores de Cospedal.

Rajoy appeared as a witness and denied knowing about the operation, receiving information about its progress, or having spoken with Bárcenas about the destruction of documents. Cospedal also denied any involvement. Luis Bárcenas maintained that the operation was looking for the evidence and recordings he still kept about the party's opaque accounting.

The trial began with ten defendants, although José Ángel Fuentes Gago and Bonifacio Díez Sevillano were excluded after all accusations withdrew the charges against them. The sentence will finally reach eight people, among whom are also Marcelino Martín Blas and José Luis Olivera. The Prosecutor's Office asks for two and a half years for the former and does not accuse the latter, although other parties involved do demand his conviction.

A sentence that will return the PP to the Rajoy era

The Popular Party is not in the dock and no member of its current leadership is accused in this procedure. The trial directly affects, however, the political and police structure of the Ministry of Interior during Mariano Rajoy's Government and the alleged use of public resources to protect the party from a corruption investigation.

A conviction would judicially support the accusation that state officials used police and secret funds to obstruct a case that compromised the PP and some of its top leaders. An acquittal would strengthen the defenses, which have been presenting 'Kitchen' for years as an intelligence operation later distorted by Bárcenas and the accusations.

Congress already politically concluded in 2021 that personnel, means, and resources of the Ministry of Interior were illegally used to favor the interests of the Popular Party. The ruling of the Audiencia Nacional will be of a different nature, because it must attribute concrete criminal responsibilities based on the evidence presented during the trial.

The ruling will also come when Alberto Núñez Feijóo has made the corruption surrounding the PSOE and Pedro Sánchez's government one of the main arguments of his opposition. A conviction against the former Interior leadership would force the current PP to once again answer for a period from which it tries to distance itself, but whose judicial proceedings continue to reach former ministers and police officials.

The sentence will be appealable and there is still no date for its announcement. Fernández Díaz, Francisco Martínez, and Eugenio Pino have waived their right to a final statement this Tuesday. Thirteen years after the investigated operation, the next answer will come in the ruling signed by the Fourth Section of the Audiencia Nacional.