Spain's criminal court the National Audience is to open a trial against the former interior minister under Mariano Rajoy's PP government, Jorge Fernández Díaz, and 11 others, including senior ministerial officials and Spanish National Police leaders over the so-called 'Operation Kitchen', a parapolice espionage and cover-up operation allegedly launched in 2013 and 2014 to steal incriminating material connected to another PP corruption scandal, the massive Gürtel case, which was in the hands of PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas. In the judicial decision, judge Manuel García Castelló rejected as extemporaneous the request made by the private prosecution conducted by the PSOE to declare the PP civilly liable in the affair over financial benefits and establishes, as a subsidiary matter, that this is the reponsibility of the General Administration of the State in the event that the investigated are convicted.
The resolution from judge García Castelló includes all the crimes alleged by the different prosecutions being conducted: alleged crimes of disclosure of secrets, abuse of authority, omission of the duty to prosecute crimes, bribery, influence peddling, misuse of public funds, cover-ups, violations of privacy and obstruction of justice. In the case of the private prosecutions of the PSOE, Podemos and the Bárcenas family, further alleged offences are added: criminal organization and illicit association, among others. For García Castelló, the different accounts given by those indicted, and the criminal nature of the alleged acts, are, in principle, sufficient to send the whole case to trial.
In addition to the former minister, the judge sent 12 others to trial: the former undersecretary for security Francisco Martínez, the Spanish National Police's former deputy director of opperations, Eugenio Pino, the police officers José Luis Olivera, Marcelino Martín Blas, José Ángel Fuentes Gago, Bonifacio Díez Sevillano, Enrique García Castaño, Bonifacio Díez Sevillano, Andrés Manuel Gómez Gordo, the retired police commissioner and centre of the macro-investigation which led to this case, José Manuel Villarejo, as well as to former chauffeur for Bárcenas, Sergio Ríos Esgueva.
Public prosecutors make a move
The public prosecutors had already asked the judge to open a trial against ex-minister Fernández Díaz and another seven people prosecuted for the parapolice espionage on the ex-treasurer of the PP, Luis Bárcenas, allegedly orchestrated in 2013 from the interior department in order to get hold of documents from the Gürtel case. The anti-corruption prosecutors had sent a letter to the National Audience judge in charge of the Operation Kitchen investigation, once again requesting that he send this case to trial, a request supported by the private prosecution conducted by the PSOE. The prosecutors' request was based on the need to "guarantee the right of all parties to a process without undue delays."
Procedure started in 2018 in the framework of the Villarejo case
The investigation of the Kitchen case, which arose from the Villarejo case, began on November 7th, 2018, following a report by the internal ministry unit analyzing documentation intercepted at the residence of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo which pointed to the existence of an alleged espionage operation against PP ex-treasurer Luis Bárcenas. After several years of investigation, on July 29th, 2021, the judge proposed to try the former minister Fernández Díaz, his then-number two Francisco Martínez, and six others under investigation, including the former deputy operational director of the National Police Eugenio Pino, and Villarejo himself.
In that same resolution, the judge left out of the proceedings the former general secretary of the PP María Dolores de Cospedal and her husband, the businessman Ignacio López del Ferro, who were investigated for a few months. In February of this year, the prosecution service sent its provisional conclusions, in which it requested 15 years imprisonment for Díaz and Martínez, and between 2 and a half years and 19 for the rest of the defendants, with Villarejo facing the highest request.