Spanish translation by Xavier Domènech, English by thefreeonline

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“Phones tapped in the name of the government party – Extortion, corruption, shameless enrichment: the activities of a former Police Commissioner dominate the electoral campaign in Spain.”

The Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger has published a forceful article on “The sewers of the Spanish state”, which reviews the direct relations of the Popular Party with the controversial Commissioner Villarejo and the Fake News campaign that affected the different political adversaries of the then Government of Mariano Rajoy.

Full text of the article

Neither the Catalan separatists, nor the immigrants who cross the Mediterranean, nor the enormous unemployment rate are the most exciting topics in Madrid during the hours leading up to the general elections. The most exciting topic is the “sewers of the Spanish State”: an abyss of dirty stories with extortion, corruption, illegal telephone tapping, false information dissemination, in which are implicated, above all, politicians of the Popular Party (PP), but also leaders of the Socialist Party (PSOE) currently in power.

The main protagonist is a 67-year-old retired police commissioner, José Manuel Villarejo, who has been detained for a year and a half accused of creating a criminal organization, bribery and money laundering.

Illegal telephone eavesdropping

A commission of parliamentary investigation is clarifying the activities of Villarejo, who carried out numerous dirty tricks as much for the conservatives as for the socialists, without either part knowing his double game.

He also did “jobs” for business leaders. For years he had felt safe, not only because he was protected by senior officials of the main Spanish parties, but also because he had gathered enough blackmail material, had made a huge file of illegally intercepted phone calls, had copied the diskettes and stored them in several safe places.

Jailed ex-Inspector Villarejo spills the Beans..

(All kinds of political corruption are rife in Spain with politicians of all parties lining their pockets, and though hundreds have been indicted almost none have ever been convicted…ed.)

The method was simple: he bribed computer technicians from telephone companies, he could pay up to 1,000 euros per intercepted connection.

Villarejo did various jobs for the Popular Party, which governed from 2011 to 2018.

The objective of his jobs were high positions of the Catalan administration and of parties of the left, among them the leader of Podemos (We Can), Pablo Iglesias.

Apparently, the Ministry of the Interior had assigned at least two police experts to help Villarejo. The aim was to gather evidence to show that senior officials of the Catalan administration had hidden large amounts of money in Switzerland and that Podemos had illegally received financial contributions from the Venezuelan government and Iran.

”GUESS WHERE: the robbers go free, judges are condemned, murderers get amnesty, victims get buried in ditches, workers get repressed, the corrupt get rewarded…… Spanish Justice in 6 phrases’‘

As the police failed to get any evidence against them it was Villarejo’s job to falsify documents and send them to an Internet portal for dissemination.

The information had great repercussion, because there were antecedents of irregular conducts: previously the regime had initiated processes against several Catalan politicians accusing them of corruption, (without proof. ed ) and some leaders of Podemos had been accused of receiving subsidies from Venezuela. Now it has come to light that a mobile phone belonging to one of the collaborators of Pablo Iglesias was stolen by order of Villarejo.

Villarejo had experience in “dirty work”.

During his time in the police service, he was involved in illegal actions ordered by the then socialist government against sympathizers of the terrorist organization ETA. In that case he established contacts with members of the Socialist Party, including with the current Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado.

Operation Kitchen

From the circles of the Popular Party, he accepted the task of torpedoing the rapprochement between Podemos and the Socialist Party, which threatened the stability of the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy. He also intervened when PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas became a threat to his own party comrades in 2013.

Bárcenas was the driving force behind the corrupt network “Gürtel” formed by politicians and PP contractors, and had diverted large amounts of money to their accounts. When he began to fear that he would be arrested, he demanded that the PP leaders guarantee his impunity. Failing to do so – because of an investigating judge who acted firmly – he spread information about the “black miney box” of his party through various media.

According to this information, Barcenas himself had delivered large amounts of cash to senior Popular Party officials, including Mariano Rajoy. (The then Prime Minister.ed.)

Villarejo bribed Bárcenas’ driver to remove from his apartment all the information that could incriminate the leadership of the PP.

The action was called “Operation Kitchen”.

Officially, Villarejo ran a small detective agency. His clients paid him generously, it is said that his private assets amount to almost 20 million euros.

He was discovered by chance: a special department of the police intercepted a telephone conversation with the President of the Community of Madrid, in which Villarejo confessed that he had hidden on his tax return the shares of a company in the United States and the property of a mansion in Marbella. A few days later, both were arrested.

The recordings of Villarejo’s telephone conversations with Francisco González, CEO of the BBVA banking Group, the second largest bank in Spain, also caused a sensation. González wanted to avoid at all costs that the socialist government forced his bank to merge with others.

Implicating King Juan Carlos

On two occasions, the telephone recordings sent to the media contained compromising statements about the King Emeritus Juan Carlos. (now ‘retired’. ed)

Thus, it was made public that the organizer of the pleasure trips that he carried out with his German “friend” Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, had contacts with drug traffickers.

The “friend” also expressed her indignation because the king wanted to use her account in Monaco to hide bribes to the tax authorities around a mediation that he carried out in a major business in Saudi Arabia.

Now, the politica scene in Madrid, is awaiting whatever more media bombs from the ex-commissar’s arsenal will explode before the elections of April 28.

Thomas Urban – 04.15.19

in 2011 there were already 730 corruption cases against politicians

España, paraíso de los Corruptos

Lista de políticos imputados por corrupción y que, a pesar de todo, están presentes en la política.

List of politicians indicted for corruption who, despite everything, continue in politics.

https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/espana-paraiso-de-los-politicos-corruptos/

The Spanish Right have been looting the public ever since they first took power with a military coup and civil war in 1937 Deluge of Scandals and Poverty as Spanish elite claim ‘Recession is Over”.

version en castellano

Contundente artículo de un Diario Suizo sobre “Las cloacas del Estado Español”

Por Thomas Urban / Traducción Xavier Domènech