The former Secretary of State for Security of the PP, Francisco Martínez, denied this Monday before the National Court that he had given instructions to spy on the leaders of Podemos with the aim of finding negative information that could harm them politically. This is confirmed by sources close to Martínez’s statement as an accused before judge Santiago Pedraz, who has been investigating police maneuvers against the group now led by Ione Belarra since last February.
The search for the background of the Podemos deputies is one of the episodes on which the judge focused based on the messages seized from Martinez in the Kitchen case, recordings and apocryphal documents published in the media and incorporated testimonies in other court cases.
In this WhatsApp exchange, which took place in January 2016, when negotiations between the PSOE and Podemos for the formation of a government were in their early stages, it is reported how Martínez wrote to a prominent member of the police: “Those from Podemos who had a background, were you able to confirm anything? Commissioner Enrique García Castaño responded “nothing.” “Cagüenlaputa!” » exclaimed Martínez.
However, before the judge, Martínez denied having asked to search for information on the leaders of the group and also assured that no one had informed him of these searches. Last spring, the former “number two” of the Interior requested that the file be archived, because the use of his messages, obtained within the framework of the Cuisine affair, in the Pedraz investigation was considered to be a misdemeanor, after judge Manuel García Castellón suspended his access to them.
At the same time, Judge Pedraz received a set of reports and letters from different police units in which restricted database queries were carried out by his agents on Podemos members. According to the calculations of the lawyers of the formation, 10% of the units justified these searches, which they framed in “counter-surveillance” tasks or by judicial decision, an additional 10% are classified as “automatic entries” and in a 80% did not justify them. As a result, the Podemos Prosecutor’s Office asked the magistrate to ask Internal Affairs to analyze whether these searches were carried out and to detail, if so, why they were carried out.
Among these reports is that of the Provincial Information Brigade of Madrid, which justifies that the searches took place after the leaders of Podemos themselves, following the pre-campaign for the 2014 European Championships, requested the collaboration of the police after those who were some of its leaders. The leaders at the time – Pablo Iglesias and Iñigo Errejón, among others – had received threats from far-right groups. “Both for the investigation of criminal acts and for the planning of security services, consultation of the IT applications of the General Directorate of Police is necessary,” states this report.
During the interrogation this Monday, Martínez also dissociated himself from another of the episodes that Pedraz is investigating: the publication, on the same dates, of the PISA Report (Pablo Iglesias Sociedad Anónima). It is a file, without police seal or signature, in which unspecified accusations regarding the financing of Podemos were made.
According to Martínez’s conversations, this document was the work of the political brigade, as some of its members appear to speak to him about obtaining data and its subsequent leak to the media. Before the judge, Martínez assured that he had met him through the press. The PISA report was rejected as an indication of any illegality by the National Court and the Supreme Court because it was based, among other reasons, on press clippings.
Eight months of research
Last February, Pedraz became the first magistrate to agree to analyze through criminal means whether the police leadership of the PP governments with Mariano Rajoy maneuvered illegally to harm Podemos and its leaders in the midst of the party’s rise. Already in his order of admission for treatment, the judge explained that for the moment he would not investigate the minister of the time, Jorge Fernández Díaz, nor the police director, Ignacio Cosidó, but that he reportedly investigating several of his subordinates and senior police officers. .
The complaint from Ione Belarra’s party emphasized that the people investigated, on the orders of Martínez and ultimately Fernández Díaz, “were responsible for carrying out prospective investigations without any connection with any police interest, without any judicial or public prosecutor’s control over the people who carried them out. the political organization Podemos.
The main objective, according to this complaint, was its subsequent leak to the media under the seal of the reliability of “police sources” and finally to discredit the party that Pablo Iglesias then led in the eyes of public opinion, as well as attack the compensation of its deputies and other public officials.
The consequences of this illegal police activity against the party, explains the complaint, are found in the headlines in eight different actions: from the investigation of Iglesias in the PISA report (on the false irregular financing of Podemos) to the leak of a “false” document of an account in his name at Euro Pacific Bank Limited or the manipulation of documents or internal police files to give the appearance of legality to the actions of the defendants.
Since its emergence into Spanish politics during the 2014 European elections, neither Podemos nor any of its leaders have been found guilty of irregular financing of the party. A Madrid court kept open proceedings in what was known as the “Neurona case” open for three years, which was ultimately dismissed for lack of evidence.
