Judge Manuel García Castellón does not want to see María Dolores de Cospedal in the National Court. After being accused of espionage against Luis Barcena, García Castellón refused to testify in the Villarejo case, which is closely related to the first one, specifically the one investigating the pressure on the former treasurer. The lawyer did not send the information from the box B of the People’s Party to the media.
In an order accessed by elDiario.es, the judge in the Villarejo case denies the request of Javier Gómez de Liano, Barcenas’ former lawyer, to testify as a witness for María Dolores de Cospedal. Gómez de Liano appears as a victim in the 36th count of the Villarejo case, which the judge withheld, even after it was filed, and which only came to light when the Criminal Chamber issued an order forcing it to be reopened.
García Castellón then had no choice but to accept Gómez de Liano’s condition as a victim and accept his statement. On May 23, a lawyer who had been separated from Barcenas’ defense for years insisted in front of a judge one of the pieces of evidence contained in the article: a recording in which the defendants talk about how he would treat the former state attorney close to Cospedal. A pressure maneuver was organized to prevent the irregular financing papers from reaching the press.
Gómez de Liano put the former general secretary of the PP behind the operation, adding that there was even an attempt to bribe the secretary in exchange for information from Barcenas in his office. As El Periódico de España later reported. Regarding these facts, Gómez de Liano filed a complaint with another court of the National Court, which rejected the facts due to lack of evidence. By refusing to cite Cospedal, García Castellón further expands what Anticorruption described as the “red line” of the judge’s defense of the PP leadership. [leer aquí ‘La exculpación de Cospedal en cinco actos (de García Castellón)] And that includes Mariano Rajoy.
Part 36 of the Villarejo case was opened as a result of the suppression of the 2nd Investigation Court of Marbella, which ordered the search of the home of two individuals, Halit Sahitaj and Jana Kleiner, in another case. Several emails with four audio files from October 20, 2014 in a fully functioning kitchen have surfaced, showing a new trick to hide PP’s irregular funding.
“Commission from people connected to PP”
Audio files collected in his car by the Criminal Chamber of the National Court revealed “a demonstration commission carried out by a third party linked to the Popular Party to pressure Luis Barcenas and his lawyer at the time in St. investigation known to Gurtel, Javier Gómez de Liano, that no compromising or damaging information related to this investigation was revealed.
After analyzing the four audio files sent to Gómez de Liano’s email address, it was concluded that the three interlocutors were Jose Luis Moreno Sella, Monica Gil Manzano, and Juan Ramon Dias Moro, the three defendants to date in a separate Section 36. The Villarejo case.
To deepen the investigation, lawyer Gómez de Liano asked José Aliste Martín, a lawyer already under investigation in a Madrid court for his involvement in the alleged conspiracy of the PP political brigade, to obtain information against Podemos de ex Venezuelan hierarchs. In addition, Gómez de Liano was requested by three members of Jose Manuel Villarejo’s entourage, in addition to the retired policeman himself: lawyers Javier Iglesias and Oscar Jimenez Rubia, and state attorney and former PP number Maria Dolores de. Cospedal.
The anti-corruption prosecution, which at the time already opposed the closure of the article dictated by García Castellón, did not support the statements of four witnesses at this procedural point, but supported the fifth, who was under investigation. This is the lawyer Javier Iglesias Redondo, nicknamed “El Largo”, a regular in the Villarejo circle, who is known to Barcenas as the person who went to visit him in prison in the summer of 2013 to propose to him, on behalf of. The PP government, the dismissal of the Minister of Justice, Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, the prosecutors of Gurtel and the prosecution of his wife, if he did not count the box B of the conservatives.
Prosecutors Miguel Serrano and Cesar de Rivas claim that in Gómez de Liano’s May 23 statement, “objective data already verified in this case, about possible participation in this conspiracy, was provided by Javier Iglesias Redondo, a lawyer close to the People’s Party, who visited. Luis Barcenas in Soto del Real prison without his lawyer.
García Castellón admitted that Javier Iglesias testified, but not as an investigator, but as a witness. Prosecutors cautioned that “the outcome of this statement” depends on whether they support Gomez de Liano’s request for Cospedal and the others to appear in his brief.
An old acquaintance of the information service
The political brigade, including Villarejo, would study the personal accounts of Barcenas’ then-defender, lawyer Gómez de Liano. with the intention of finding dirty money that would compromise him. To do this, they contacted one of the ex-magistrate’s former clients, Russian mobster Zakhar Kalashov, who was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2010 for his involvement in Russian organized crime.
There are numerous entries in Commissioner Villarejo’s diaries showing how the kitchen plot, without a court order or warrant, investigated the alleged collection in Gómez de Liano’s “B” of up to 5.5 million euros to be paid by Zakhar Kalashov. It was never approved. One of the foreign nationals whose audio was confiscated was Halit [o Jaled] Sahitai is an old acquaintance of the Spanish intelligence service and a member of the circle of former client of Gómez de Liano, the Russian-Georgian mobster Kajar Kalashov.
Source: El Diario
