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The Police prepared a series of police notes shortly after Luis Bárcenas entered prison for the first time in which, already in August 2013, they detailed both the number of recordings available to the former PP treasurer and their content.

The judge who instructs the so-called 'Operation Kitchen' has intercepted this documentation, held by a prisoner from the Estremera prison who shared a module with Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo.

The veracity of its content has been ratified by Bárcenas himself, who has been questioned in recent months about the sound material available to him and which became the great object of desire of the Government chaired by Mariano Rajoy, who activated the Police to get it.

This documentation, headed under the title of 'Activities of LB', in reference to the former treasurer of the PP, already detailed just a few months after starting the operation to snatch Bárcenas what his sensitive material consisted of.

"The sound documentation is found on a

pendrive

which contains two key conversations, "the report began. According to it, Bárcenas recorded them" using a microphone pen that transmitted to a kind of flask that acted as a receiver. "In one of them," the police note points out, "A conversation is collected between Luis Bárcenas and Javier Arenas, where he makes a harsh criticism of the executive members of the PP, especially María Dolores de Cospedal." He adds that this film contains "allusions to the alleged irregularities of said leader, as well as as well as her husband's business ", Ignacio López del Hierro.

As for the second of the recordings, the Police indicated that "it would pick up a tense conversation between President Rajoy and Luis Bárcenas and (his wife) Rosalía Iglesias." "These conversations would be kept apart and are so specific and descriptive that we intend to use them until the last moment, since, if made public, they would undoubtedly cause a delicate situation."

Judge Manuel García Castellón has asked Bárcenas about this material and the former

popular

treasurer

has confirmed the authenticity of the information available to the police officers who were spying on him. The former high-ranking official of the PP explained to the instructor that at one point he decided to hide these recordings in the art restoration studio that his wife had rented in Madrid's Calle de General Díaz Porlier. "There is a piece of furniture there," he said, "which is a long bench that is hollow underneath." "It has a lid where you sit but that can be lifted and inside you can store whatever you want." "That's where I left documentation, a tape recorder and some flash drives with some recording," he added.

"There were two recordings," Bárcenas noted.

"One with Don Mariano Rajoy and another with Don Javier Arenas, which are the only conversations that I have recorded and that I recorded exclusively because I began to worry about the turn the song was taking."

Not surprisingly, his confrontation with the party leadership after uncovering the existence of his hidden fortune in Switzerland ended up leading to his imprisonment during the summer of 2013 by order of judge Pablo Ruz, who at that time was instructing the 'Gürtel case' .

The reason that led him to resort to recording their conversations was, in his own words, "the very clear unchecking on the part of my party colleagues as to what had been the performance of Álvaro Lapuerta (his historical boss in the Treasury of the PP) ".

It should be remembered that the investigation has already proven that police officers accessed this property without a court order, which they called "the zulo" in code, with the aim of stealing the material that Bárcenas might have against the PP leadership. One of these commissioners, Enrique García Castaño, former head of the Central Unit for Operational Support (UCAO) of the Police, decided to collaborate with the Justice more than a year ago and confessed to entering this restoration study with the collaboration of the driver of the family. The operation took place without a court order.

However, and despite the investigators' belief, García Castaño maintains that he does not have stolen material from the aforementioned property in his possession.

On the contrary, Judge García Castellón and the prosecutors maintain that the most relevant material that was stolen in the 'Operation Kitchen' is still in the hands of both García Castaño and Villarejo and that it has not yet seen the light.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • PP

  • Luis Barcenas

  • Mariano Rajoy

  • Jose Manuel Villarejo

  • Alvaro Lapuerta

  • Pablo Ruz

  • Maria Dolores de Cospedal

  • Justice

CongresoVillarejo assures that he had "direct contact" with Rajoy to inform him about the 'Kitchen operation' but does not provide evidence

'Operation Kitchen' Villarejo's agendas reflect that Mariano Rajoy was promptly informed of the espionage of Bárcenas

Investigation commission 'Nobody knows anything': senior Interior officials ignore the espionage of Bárcenas in Congress

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