As soon as she stood before the microphone, in the middle of the courtroom of the Audiencia Nacional where Operation Kitchen is being tried, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría recalled the string of positions she held during Mariano Rajoy’s time in Moncloa: sole Vice President of the Government, Executive Spokesperson, and Minister of the Presidency, from which the National Intelligence Center (CNI) depended. Despite this accumulation of power, Sáenz de Santamaría has “no record” —not even “no recollection”— of the operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Ministry of Interior, to steal documents from the former treasurer of the Popular Party, Luis Bárcenas.
Read more The court admits that Jordi Pujol cannot defend himself and exonerates him from the corruption trial
—I was Minister of the Presidency, not of the Interior…
The witness’s statement was brief, without questions from the Public Prosecutor’s Office or the State Attorney’s Office, as already happened last week in the interrogations of the former head of government, Mariano Rajoy, and the former general secretary of the Popular Party, María Dolores de Cospedal. Brief in her answers, relying on a lack of memory —”I don’t know”, “I don’t remember”, “I have no record”—, Sáenz de Santamaría even denied that the Government had carried out any kind of investigation when the Bárcenas Papers scandal broke, encapsulating the controversy in Génova, where she had no responsibilities. At one point in the interrogation, the PSOE lawyer asked her about her supposed “tense” relationship with Cospedal, but the president of the court, Teresa Palacios, asked her to redirect the questions. Without going into these “tensions”, the former vice president wanted to make it clear, also concisely, that she “never” had any “approach or strategy” regarding the Gürtel case. “Nor do I know Ms. Cospedal’s strategy or if she had one,” she said, insisting on that firewall between the government of the time and the Popular Party.
Sáenz de Santamaría shielded herself behind all the matters she had on her desk every week —”there were so many Fridays” [referring to the day when the Councils of Ministers were held], “there were so many things”— to justify her lack of memory regarding the espionage case against the Bárcenas family. She did not even know if she had learned from the media about the first news, in 2015, which spoke of a group of police officers having seized information from Bárcenas that they did not hand over to a judge. And she acknowledged that the Secretary of State for Communication was responsible for compiling all press clippings affecting the Government to prepare press conferences after the Council of Ministers, which she led. What she did remember, responding with a “no, absolutely not”, is whether the CNI had any involvement in monitoring the Bárcenas family’s surroundings.
Willy Bárcenas
“He told me about some recordings in Rajoy’s office in Arenas’ presence”
The person who spoke about these surveillances this Monday, as the trial enters its fourth week, is Willy Bárcenas, son of the former treasurer, who said he believes there was “an order” from the Government, from which Penitentiary Institutions depend, to make his father’s “life impossible” in Soto del Real prison (Madrid), during the time he was in pre-trial detention. Both Bárcenas and his wife, Rosalía Iglesias, also referred to that period as “a real hell”, pointing to the executive of the time as responsible.
Willy Bárcenas, who, like his parents, is acting as a private prosecutor, explained that the family’s driver, Sergio Ríos, considered the mole of the plot, got his job recommended by a person who worked in the security area of the Popular Party. “We had a lot of confidence in him,” he stated. That trust, according to his explanation, was broken after the assault he suffered at his home, along with his mother, at the hands of a fake priest. “It smelled pretty bad to us from the very first moment,” said the former treasurer’s son, who explained that when he was restraining the fake priest, Ríos “appeared very quickly” with “a somewhat disfigured face” and shortly after, more than a dozen police officers.
Read more How Vox plays with the PP
Furthermore, Willy Bárcenas also admitted that his father had told him on occasion that he had in his possession some recordings in which the former treasurer was allegedly heard going up to Rajoy’s office and handing him a “remainder” of the B accounting. All this in the presence, according to their versions, of former leader Javier Arenas, who also testified this morning, via videoconference, as a witness.
Javier Arenas
“Fernández and Martínez are great professionals at the service of Spaniards”
The former general secretary of the PP, and now a senator, explained that he does not know if he was recorded by Bárcenas. However, if he was, it did not cause him “any uneasiness”. Arenas admitted to meeting Bárcenas at the end of 2012 in a Seville restaurant, before the fortune the former treasurer was hiding in Switzerland became public knowledge. Bárcenas claimed he recorded that conversation, although the parapolice plot later made it disappear. At that meeting, Bárcenas expressed his anger at the investigation being carried out against him by prosecutors and and police. He also has “no record whatsoever” of the existence of the other recording, in Rajoy’s presence.
Arenas also distanced himself from the illegal operation to destroy evidence in Bárcenas’ possession, something he described as “very confusing”. However, he did take the opportunity to defend the former leadership of the Interior Ministry.
—I only know Messrs. Fernández and Martínez in this room, great professionals in public administration at the service of Spaniards…
Read more The end of the world party
