José Manuel Villarejo has extended his tentacles for decades from the National Police, where he left prey to Francoism. In 2016 he became commissioner and, only a year later, he was arrested and preemptively imprisoned as the epicenter of a vast conspiracy to carry out espionage charges in exchange for billionaires’ funds. The Central Instruction Judgment Number 6 of the National Audience then opened a macro-summary, led by the Anti-Corruption Fiscal Office, which has more than half a century of lines of investigation and which extended to all state powers, to IBEX 35 and to the Royal Household. But the result of the first six judgments in the case is far from living up to the claims of the public prosecutor’s office: there are more absueltos (like the couple and the man from Villarejo) than those convicted; the sanctions imposed are much lower than those requested by the prosecution; and the leaders of large companies remain virtually unscathed so far.
The first six judgments of Villarejo affair A real stress test for the macrocause was created, with results that were unsatisfactory compared to expectations. According to a report from EL PAÍS, 35 people were seated on the bench of the National Audience: 19 finished; 1, exempt due to health problems; and 15, sentenced to prison (although a decade of them, to minimum sentences that do not exceed one year of imprisonment). And Villarejo, although he is the most punished (a total of three sentences against him: one of 13 years in prison, another of 8 years and another of 3 years), continues to be free without being firm in any resolution; and managed to stop a good part of the anti-corruption prosecutions: he was abject in court, he committed the crime of cohecho in four and the sentences handed down against him (this total of 24 years in prison) which were the longest initially requested by the public prosecutor (around 200 years).
“This demonstrates the disproportionate number of accusations in this process,” laments Sergio Nuño Díez de la Lastra, lawyer for Gemma Alcalá, Villarejo’s wife, who has won another victory in recent weeks. In a writing closed on November 6, the Appeals Chamber of the Audience informed that no one had appealed to the Supreme Court the absolution of Alcalá dictated in the first major judgment of the conspiracy (on the Iron, Earth and Painter projects) and therefore declared its firmness. This means that Anticorruption, which is seeking more than 83 years in prison for its involvement in the corrupt network, is giving up fighting for a conviction in the High Court. “Charges have been filed against members of Villarejo’s family, which is of real interest to the Fiscalía,” the letter states.
El cohecho, tumbado. The big boom came after the first judgment, which began in October 2021, lasted a year and focused on three accusations of espionage for Villarejo’s team (the aforementioned Iron, Land and Painter projects). Even if the Fiscalía proved that the existence of the plot led by the commissioner was proven and validated the recordings and recordings that took place (those famous audios which remained in the highest echelons of the country even though they were known by hundreds), the National Audience only convicted 10 of the 27 people who sat in the banquillo —acquitted, among others, the woman and the police officer—.
Furthermore, the sentences were much lower than those claimed in this part of the research (Villarejo’s sentence was 19 years in prison, reduced after 13 years, compared to the 110 years initially imposed). But above all, the crime of cohecho, which represents a large part of this immense process, has been excluded. Two of the three magistrates of the court considered that the commissioner had not committed illegalities in the “exercise of his function” (he decides, as a police officer) but had acted within the framework of the “private sphere”. This thesis was repeated in most of the other famous trials, causing the main charges against him to decline (he was only convicted by cohecho in one fell swoop).
This is one of the major questions on which the Supreme Court must rule. The National Court announced that the sentences handed down against Villarejo and his associate, lawyer Rafael Redondo, were brought to this instance. If the Supreme Court reintroduces the cohecho, it will change the framework of the multiple courts that fall —enero, for example, the commissioner is expected to go to the bank for cohecho for supposedly receiving a charge from the businessman Javier López Madrid to accommodate doctor Elisa Pinto—.
The directors of Planeta, Repsol and Caixabank are excluded. Other conspiracy courts resulted in prison sentences for Villarejo, imposing three years and one day in prison for carrying out a 2014 Grupo Planeta charge; and more years for spying for Repsol and Caixabank. However, the National Court limited any criminal liability to the commissioner and some of his direct collaborators, and it was left to the five executives of these companies who had also been prosecuted. The court considered that it was proven that these giant companies came into contact with the conspiracy through their security chiefs and succeeded through their services. However, in the case of Planeta, they excused their high office because “it is not proven that they saw” that Villarejo was on active duty. And, regarding the accusations against Caixabank and Repsol, because it was not “facially” believed that they knew that the corrupt network had access to confidential data for its espionage work. Four of these directors of the three companies were excess police officers.
Absolutions. The final judgments against the conspiracy were settled with Villarejo’s victorious runs, which had an absolute result for both. Last October, the commissioner dodged another 23-year prison sentence he sought from the tax authorities for the so-called savings project. Although the court considered it proven that José Moya, former president of the Persan company, had paid half a million euros for an accusation of espionage and that in reality the plot ended with the trafficking of calls from several victims; The magistrates considered that they had not been accredited “with the rigor required by criminal procedure” and that the police officers had used their position to access these confidential elements. “It is not possible to assume, against reality, that because of his status as a senior police officer, he would be notified of his specific public function for this purpose,” he said.
Last November, he suffered his second exoneration. The public again believed that his team had received another espionage mission in 2015, which consisted of collecting confidential data from a businessman from Marbella (Málaga). This confidential data ended up in the conspiracy’s possession, but judges said there was not enough evidence to demonstrate Villareja’s direct involvement in extracting this sensitive information. The Fiscalía requested other new years in prison.
Barajas’ piece. One of the six judgments of Villarejo affair This policeman as a protagonist is now celebrated all over the world. In this view, flight attendant Carlos Salamanca, former border official at Madrid’s Barajas airport and friend of Villarejo, sat on the stool; and businessman and lawyer Francisco Menéndez. The National Audience sentenced Salamanca to five years and eight months in prison (reduced sentence after three years) for having received between 2010 and 2015 large sums of money (at least more than 125,000 euros in cash) and gifts (high-end coaches, luxury watches, trips, etc.) in order to distract from the bigger picture and facilitate the uncontrolled entry into Spain of management positions of the Guinean national oil company Gepetrol, linked to the dictatorial regime of Théodoro Obiang. Menéndez, who went to the tax office in 2017 to denounce Villarejo’s plot and confess, was only sentenced to three months in prison.
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