When the judge of the National Court Manuel García Castellón concluded the investigation of Operation Kitchen, he stated in black and white that there were “dysfunctions and irregularities in the management and control” of the reserved funds, which had led to the financing of the “intrinsically illegal police operation” [to steal documentation from the former treasurer of the Popular Party Luis Bárcenas that could affect the party].
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Public money allocations that could exceed 50,000 euros, at a rate of 2,000 euros per month that the plot paid to the mole of the operation, Bárcenas’s then-driver, to which 700 euros for the pistol they paid for him, Sergio Ríos, would have to be added. Yesterday, the oral hearing delved into the use of reserved funds through several of its “cashiers,” which revealed a certain lack of accountability, while also pointing towards the former operational head of the National Police during Mariano Rajoy’s mandate, Eugenio Pino, who is in the dock.
The first “cashier,” as he defined himself, who appeared before the court was the retired Civil Guard colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos, who had assigned functions regarding reserved funds as director of the Coordination and Studies cabinet of the Secretary of State for Security. The person designated to coordinate the Mossos d’Esquadra, Civil Guard, and Police to prevent the holding of the referendum on 1-O gave a technical explanation about the management of reserved funds in which he reduced his role to a mere “documentary” control, without knowing the “ultimate purpose” of the use of those expenses.
In summary, each month, from the Operational Deputy Directorate (DAO) of the Police, a remainder was requested to replenish what had been spent the previous month from the cash box, with a list of operations in which the details were not specified. And each month, he assured, up to 200 operations arrived, including those of the Civil Guard. Sources close to the management of reserved expenses consulted by La Vanguardia contradict Pérez de los Cobos’s version, as they assure that for each cash box opening, the operation and the police unit to which the funds are destined must be recorded in writing.
The current Minister of Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who thoroughly reviewed the management of the funds when he held the portfolio, hinted in the Congress of Deputies that one of the reasons he lost confidence in Pérez de los Cobos —which led to his immediate dismissal, later annulled by the Supreme Court— was the role he played with the reserved funds during Operation Kitchen. “Would you have confidence in those people who managed the reserved funds without due control […] and allowed, with that lack of control of the reserved funds, for them to be used to destroy evidence so that the PP could hide its responsibilities?” he asked the popular bench. The retired colonel, yesterday denied the main point: he never detected “any irregularity” in their use nor did he hear about them being used for an operation named Kitchen. In any case, he pointed out, that corresponded to the DAO.
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Commissioner Felipe Lacasa was another “cashier-payer” of reserved funds who testified yesterday. This police officer spoke directly of an order from Pino to pay collaborators such as Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, another of the accused who allegedly paid Bárcenas’s driver. Both he and police officer Miguel Ángel Bayo are positioned as fund managers, but in the DAO. That is, once the allocation arrived from the Interior Ministry to the National Police, from there the funds had to be distributed to the different investigative units or collaborators.
According to Lacasa, one regular was Villarejo and the other Enrique García Castaño, a commissioner who was placed by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office at the top of the plot, but has been exempted for health reasons. Lacasa explained that Villarejo was initially the one who used the most funds, almost monthly. He was “very meticulous in everything he requested, justifying every last cent of what he asked for,” he elaborated, going on to detail that he believes he has seen Sergio Ríos’s name in his papers.
This witness, as he recounted, also held the receipt for the 700 euros used in December 2013 to buy, as stated, a pistol for the “cook,” the name that, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, agents used to refer to Bárcenas’s driver.
—It was the first time I saw the word cook. I had never heard of Operation Kitchen until after I retired, and I remembered this receipt, and that’s when I connected the cook theme with the Kitchen theme. So I assumed that, as it seems to be confirmed, that whole amalgam of operations and investigations carried out, among others by García Castaño, referred to this matter…
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