A National Police agent has explained in the trial before the National Court of retired Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo for the “Grass Project” that he and his partner Rafael Redondo tried to “disable” businessmen Luis Pérez Gil and Joaquín Molpeceres by accusing them of “brown things,” such as bank accounts abroad or “possible bribes in the port of Denia.”
This is what testified this Monday the agent whom the prosecutor’s office has identified as the “principal police-level investigator” of the “Grass Project”, for which Villarejo, Redondo and the businessman Antonio Erico Chávarri are on trial for alleged corporate espionage.
Chávarri, whose company Acisclo Gestión de Patrimonies went bankrupt in 2012, allegedly hired the retired commissioner and his partner this year for more than 400,000 euros to look for illegal actions by Pérez Gil, who intervened as insolvency administrator, and Molpeceres, the main creditor.
When asked by the prosecution how they planned to “disable” the businessmen, the agent replied that in the reports from CENYT – Villarejo’s company – it appeared that Pérez Gil would receive “cash” from other bankrupt parties who would later open “opaque accounts” in Andorra or Liechtenstein through a network of foundations.
In addition, the police officer stated that these reports also contained references to alleged “payments to commercial judges” to obtain further tenders.
Regarding Molpeceres, “there is talk of possible bribes in the port of Denia” and of “delivery of briefcases” in Madrid, he specified.
THE “FULLY ADAPTED” TESTS
The agent has stated that the sources of evidence upon which his investigation was based were three: CENYT documentation and reports; some audio recordings with the meetings between the former commissioner, his partner and the handwritten notes of Echávarri and Villarejo.
This evidence, according to the agent, was “completely consistent” in the sense that the reports “consistent in their dating with what is said in the audio files and with what is contained in the handwritten notes.”
Echávarri’s defense, through lawyer Mauro Jordán, asked whether the police had investigated the movements in these accounts, to which the agent replied “no”, since the businessman was not “the subject of the investigation”. Afterwards, Jordán concluded that the information about foreign accounts was “something that Villarejo made up.”
“I don’t know if that is true or not, among other things because it would require an investigation and certainly a European Code of Procedure in the context of an investigation that was not carried out by the Internal Affairs Department,” explained the police officer.
In its indictment, accessed by Europa Press, the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office is demanding a 12-year prison sentence for Villarejo for alleged crimes of passive bribery, discovery and disclosure of secrets and falsification of business documents.
The State Department is also indicting Redondo, for whom it is seeking a prison sentence of 4 years and 6 months for passive bribery and falsification of a commercial document. Chávarri, for his part, faces seven years in prison for the same crimes.
MORE THAN 400,000 EUROS FOR RESEARCH
In its letter, the prosecutor’s office states that Chávarri “paid a total of 411,400 euros between 2012 and 2014 to CENYT and Stuart & Mckenzie, both integrated into Grupo CENYT, of which Villarejo was the actual owner.”
The broker has broken down this amount, detailing that in November this year he paid “90,000 euros for the provision of funds paid in 2012, 45 plus VAT and 45 plus VAT”, and 250,000 euros, depending “on the success” of the work, which he received in seven payments between April 2013 and January 2014.
Villarejo, commissioner of the National Police when he took office, introduced himself to Chávarri as a “private sector lumberjack,” the uniformed officer noted in one of the seized audio recordings.
Specifically, the police officer said, the former commissioner detailed CENYT’s activities and explained that “former police officers” worked there and conducted “information analysis.”
In this first session, this agent, who responded to all parties, and three other police officers who were also involved in the investigation testified and confirmed their actions.
In addition, the defendants’ defense lawyers have submitted their preliminary questions. Villarejo’s lawyer claimed a violation of the right to defense due to the court’s “total inadmissibility of the evidence.”
The trial will continue this Tuesday at 11 a.m. in the regional court with the testimony of further witnesses.
“ALL TYPES OF PERSONAL DATA”
According to the prosecution’s brief, Villarejo acted “in response to Chávarri’s suspicion that both of them might act together to harm his interests in these proceedings.”
“The purpose of the order carried out by Chávarri and accepted by Villarejo also referred to the acquisition of all types of personal data, including those relating to possible irregular actions in which both could have been involved and unrelated to the bankruptcy proceedings, about Molpeceres and Pérez, which could be used by Chávarri Aricha himself to improve his position in the bankruptcy proceedings that affected his company Acisclo Gestión de Patrimonies,” it says in the writing.
Anticorrupción points out that, in the course of carrying out this order, Villarejo and Redondo received Pérez’s incoming and outgoing call traffic from September 15, 2012 to October 13, 2012. “This call traffic, in turn, was transferred to Chávarri by Villarejo Pérez and Redondo,” states the public prosecutor’s office.
“Due to the services provided for the implementation of the ‘Grass Project’, Villarejo and Redondo, on the one hand, and Chávarri, on the other hand, manipulated the concepts of the invoices, indicating that the services provided responded to security audit services of information systems, the identification and proposed solution of three vulnerabilities, and professional collaboration, thereby concealing the fact that they were investigative services provided by an official in active service,” the letter continues.
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