“I will answer everything I am asked.” Although the president of the court judging Operation Kitchen warned her that she had been provisionally cleared, so any false answer could serve to reopen the case against her, the former secretary general of the Popular Party arrived this Thursday at the Audiencia Nacional eager to distance herself from any parapolice operation to steal information from Luis Bárcenas because at that time she “was certain” that “that person you are talking about” (referring to the former treasurer) had no papers that could compromise the popular leadership due to its irregular financing. Words that could contradict a recording that was made public in which she asked former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo:
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—“Bárcenas’s little notebook… it would be better to be able to stop it”…
Génova’s former number two, like her ex-husband Ignacio López de Hierro, was investigated for her alleged involvement in the parapolice plot, although the case was provisionally dismissed. Also for the businessman. A decision not shared by the popular prosecution, exercised by the PSOE, which even requested, at the beginning of the oral hearing, to suspend the trial to re-indict her. A request that was flatly rejected by the court.
This morning it was her turn. Immediately after the former head of government, Mariano Rajoy, left the room after declaring that “there was no political or police (illegal) operation,” Cospedal denied having given any orders to former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, whom the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office places at the core of the police officers who launched the operation to steal information from Bárcenas. “I only asked him questions, never gave him orders,” she assured after admitting up to a dozen meetings, despite having stated during the investigation phase that they had only had four appointments. According to Cospedal, at that time, when, according to her, “all journalists” spoke with Villarejo, she was interested in the leaks of case summaries that implicated the party. These meetings would have occurred due to the commissioner’s “insistence.”
“More than founded” suspicion
She suggests that the PP was being “spied on” or “followed” by “someone” from the Interior Ministry
The former secretary general has assured that more than 13 years ago, Villarejo was “a very well-regarded person in the force,” who had been “recently decorated by the Minister of the Interior” (referring to Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba). At one point during the interrogation, Cospedal even suggested that within the Popular Party, in the midst of the Gürtel case investigation, there was a “more than founded” suspicion that they were being “spied on,” “followed,” or “observed” by “someone connected to the Ministry of the Interior.”
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For Cospedal, despite the Bárcenas case erupting more than a decade ago, the name of her former treasurer still sticks in her throat, and she has tried to avoid it at all times. She has once again resorted to the phrase Génova used at that time to distance herself from him: “That person you are talking about.” Cospedal recalled that Bárcenas was banned from the party headquarters in mid-January 2013, when it was discovered that he had millions hidden in Switzerland.
In his office, he allegedly left up to 27 boxes of documents. She herself gave the order for them to be taken away urgently “or she would put them on the street.” It took two months for them to be taken away, according to her calculations, although she doesn’t remember who did it. The former treasurer stated last Monday that he sent his former chauffeur, who allegedly became the mole in the plot, to retrieve them. The former Minister of Defense has reiterated that she was not aware of any operation to steal papers from Bárcenas because, although “he himself was going around saying he had them,” she had absolute “certainty” that it was impossible.
Cospedal did not want to miss the opportunity to speak about the former Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, who is sitting in the dock for Kitchen. Of him, she said he is “an upright and integral person, who has suffered a lot.”
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