Francisco Martínez number two of the Ministry of the Interior between January 2013 and November 2016 tried without success to avoid his imputation in the Kitchen case the case opened in the National Court for the illegal espionage of the former Treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenas
For this he asked for help from different people including PP and police officers conversations that appear in a report that the Internal Affairs department of the National Police has sent to the court that is handling the case The document collects and analyzes all the whatsapps found on the mobile phone seized from Martínez last March
Kitchen was a secret operation never communicated to the judge who instructed the case or to the police unit in charge of the investigation which was paid with funds reserved according to the documentation and the testimonies incorporated into the summary
Martínez has been accused in this case since January 2020 and declared last Thursday ten months later before Judge Manuel García Castellón
The summary of his statement is that he always thought that the actions of the police officers who spied on Bárcenas were legal and that his boss Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz knew about the operation
But the mobile phone messages that appear in the Internal Affairs report sent to the court tell a somewhat different story
Fifteen months before he learned of his accusation when Martínez learned that there was a separate piece in the Villarejo case about the police operation against Bárcenas it was when he maintained contacts with leaders of the Popular Party and with close collaborators of his time in the ministry where he expressed his concern about the investigation that had just started
Martínez says according to the messages that Internal Affairs has transcribed that all the police espionage work on Bárcenas is not his idea that he is not even a member of the PP and that the former treasurers papers did not matter to him a fig
In addition the former number two of the Interior speaks with a police officer former chief of staff of the general director of the Police Ignacio Cosidó and asks him to tell the investigating judge to archive the procedure because it is shit
What follows is a reconstruction of the Kitchen case from the position of former Secretary of State Francisco Martínez through the messages that this police report collects and that he sent to leaders of the PP and former colleagues from the Ministry of the Interior as the investigation progressed to reach his accusation decided by Judge Manuel García Castellón in January 2020
October 2018 Opening of piece number 7 Kitchen case Commissioner Villarejo was arrested and imprisoned in November 2017
During the operation numerous searches were made of his homes and the headquarters of his companies Almost a year later the Internal Affairs policemen sent a report to the National Court on the Kitchen case given that they had found recordings and documents that gave an account of the espionage of Luis Bárcenas and his family
That report came to the hands of the magistrate Diego de Egea who was then helping Manuel García Castellón in court number 6 who had joined it a few months earlier after spending more than 10 years as liaison judge in France and Italy
After opening a separate piece number 7 there are currently 28 different causes within the Tandem case or the Villarejo case some media detailed the suspicious police operation on which the judge was investigating It was then that Francisco Martínez began to worry about his future
September 2018 Cospedal does not care about everything he spoke with Villarejo Villarejos recordings surround the Popular Party
Ten months after the commissioners entry into prison some media began to make public some compromising recordings for the training made by Villarejo
Among them several where the police comment on corruption issues with Ignacio López del Hierro a businessman married to María Dolores de Cospedal general secretary of the PP until July 2018
Francisco Martínez is then a national deputy of the PP He has been out of the Interior Ministry for almost two years but knows the danger that Villarejo poses and all the information that he has accumulated during his years working in intelligence tasks at the Interior Ministry
Martínez speaks with a relative on WhatsApp and according to the Internal Affairs report he writes Cospedal doesnt care everything he spoke to him was for the good of the State
At that time Cospedal issued a statement What is clear is that the issues that are being discussed have been prosecuted for nine years and those conversations did not change anything that happened neither by Ignacio López del Hierro nor by my part secretary general of the PP a party that was in the opposition
At that time the meeting that Cospedal has with Villarejo in his office at the PP headquarters on Genova street has not yet transpired
That appointment took place at the beginning of the summer of 2009 Villarejo comes accompanied by Ignacio López del Hierro Cospedals husband and they enter incognito through the headquarters garage
The commissioner as heard in the recording reveals some secrets of the An investigation opened a few months before against PP leaders for the Gürtel case and even maintains that certain policemen have tried without success to hide some of the key evidence from the entire investigation
After knowing this recording in November 2018 Cospedal resigned from the Executive of the PP and left his seat in the Congress of Deputies
November 2018 They have nothing at all it is a description of reality and with errors The Internal Affairs policemen detail in their report that in midNovember Francisco Martínez continues to comment with a former collaborator on the news about the strange operation that the National Court is investigating and for the moment tries to downplay it from reality with errors he writes
December 2018 Other guesses have no comment Although it has been more than two years since he left the Secretary of State for Security Martínez remains concerned about everything related to the police operation to spy on Bárcenas family
And he takes advantage of the fact that there is a firm ruling on the incident of the false priest who assaulted the home of Bárcenas and handcuffed the wife and son of the former PP treasurer at gunpoint to write to his former colleagues a draft of a press release that should come out on that particular
In this fivepoint draft he points out that since there is a final ruling on the incident any conjecture does not deserve comment And in point 4 he clarifies If someone had at that time five years ago information different from that which was incorporated during the trial they had to bring it to the knowledge of the judicial authorities the prosecutors office or the court
Especially in the case of police officers If they didnt they committed a crime Martínez reacted in this way to information that indicated without any proof that Interior had paid 10000 euros to the false priest to try to get hold of the documentation that Bárcenas was hiding in his home
Martinez points to anotherWhatsApp that the PP would try to spread that draft of the press release although he resigned himself I dont think they want to
February 2019 Talk to Manolo García Castellón and let him close this shit Francisco Martínez maintains a relationship with a Police Inspector Pedro Agudo who was for a very short period chief of staff of the Director General of the Police Ignacio Cosido during the PP mandate
The policeman had to leave that post after being involved in a scandal his wife ran an academy that trained opponents of the police and was assigned as Interior attaché to Rome where he coincided for a few years with the liaison judge at that time Manuel García Castellón the same person who has personally assumed the investigation of the Kitchen case since January 2019
The police officer Pedro Agudo presumes to Martínez that he is a very good friend of the judge because they have been five years together and reminds the former secretary of state that he also gets along very well with the president of the National Court Ramón Navarro
Martínez asks the police inspector to tell Manolo to give them a hand that the prosecutors are very Taliban
Pedro Agudo reassures him and tells him that Judge García Castellón is not going to impute graduates then Martínez was still a national deputy and therefore could only be tried in the Supreme Court and that at most he will ask them to declare in writing as witnesses
A few days later on February 19 2019 Martínez insists with the policeman who is supposedly a friend of the judge I am trying to go on the lists for the judicial matter Talk to Manolo to close that shit
Manolo is the magistrate García Castellón who did the opposite of what the policeman Pedro Agudo predicted The judge imputed Francisco Martínez in January 2020 and nine months later former minister Jorge Fernández Díaz
In his indictments the judge has been detailing the evidence that the investigation has collected on an illegal espionage apparatus on the Bárcenas family set up from the Interior with the alleged authorization and supervision of the Secretary of State Francisco Martínez and Minister Jorge Fernandez
February 2019 GrandeMarlaska has no papers The former Secretary of State for Security speaks with a Civil Guard colonel and asks him if he thinks Minister Fernando GrandeMarlaska will speak about the Kitchen case in his appearance in the Congress of Deputies
Martínez expresses his concern that the socialist government uses this issue in view of the proximity of the elections and clarifies in his message to the colonel Although they do not have papers
The Interior Minister Fernando Grande Marlaska had to process the declassification of confidential information from his department in order to continue the investigation at the National Court
March 2019 The Bárcenas papersI didnt give a damn Francisco Martínez messages with another former collaborator in the Ministry of the Interior and is outraged according to the Internal Affairs report with former Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz and with the former Director General of the Police Ignacio Cosidó for the Kitchen case
Martínez remembers that those who were interested in the roles of Bárcenas and their repercussions were Cosidó and Fernández I am not a member of the PP and I didnt give a damn about the roles
Martínez complains that they leave him off the electoral lists and keep the former minister and Cosidó who were those who had an interest in Operation Kitchen and now according to the Internal Affairs report they are both in profile The report includes different messages to Mariano Rajoy and the general secretary of the PP Teodoro García Egea