• Newspaper Library Jorge Fernandez received Rodrigo Rato at the headquarters of Interior (08/08/2015)

The Ministry of the Interior of Jorge Fernández Díaz spied on EL MUNDO journalist Fernando Lázaro to find out which sources had leaked information to him in the summer of 2015. This surveillance, revealed by Cadena Ser, was built on the network of contacts of a high police commander with the connivance of the ministry, whose number two appears in those calls in which they try to reach the journalist's source.

The whatsapp of the then Secretary of State for Security during the last PP government, Francisco Martínez, demonstrate espionage. The interception of the communications occurred when the journalist published that the then Minister of the Interior of Mariano Rajoy summoned Rodrigo Rato - former vice president with José María Aznar, who had been arrested and already then accused in several procedures - at the headquarters of the ministry. The minister summoned Rato a week after the latter went to court to testify in the Bankia case. "Jorge Fernández received Rodrigo Rato at the headquarters of the Interior", headlined EL MUNDO in its edition of August 8, 2105.

Francisco Martínez had the support of the head of the Central Unit of Operational Support (UCAO) of the National Police, Enrique García Castaño. Both are accused in Operation Kitchen, an investigation into which the now-known messages were incorporated.

It is the police command who writes to the Secretary of State, disturbed by the publication of the news. Thus begins an exchange of messages where they address who has provided the information of the meeting. He asks about "who leaked" to Fernando Lázaro "that the minister (of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz) received Rato." The number two of Fernández Díaz asks him about the origin of the information and Enrique García Castaño, after telling him that he has spoken with the journalist and that his source has insinuated, but concluding that it does not fit, responds "you just have to look at calls, he found out the next day" of the meeting between the then head of Interior and Rato. "I'm going to look at him those days," adds García Castaño. "The key" is the journalist, he adds.

The number two of Interior asks him to let him know when he knows something. In the following days he insists. "We're on it," he receives in response. A few days later it is the police command who writes to Martinez. "We already know," he warns him and tells him that he has spoken with Commissioner José Luis Olivera, then head of the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime so that he was the one who transferred the information first to Francisco Martínez himself, "because the minister (Fernández Díaz) is very nervous about that issue. And it is not advisable to screw up."

The head of the UCAO has been accused in several pieces of the case Tandem is implicated for making use of his network of contacts in telephone companies. In these companies there were security chiefs who were former police commissioners and they provided him with call records without judicial authorization.

The records to which García Castaño had access were then passed into the hands of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, who paid García Castaño for his services.

Asked by this newspaper, Martinez justified his action: "My duty was to know who had leaked the information and García Castaño never found out. It was interesting with obvious things like you had to know who had called the journalist who gave the news and I had to pay attention to him because he offered to help because he said he had a good relationship with all the media. That's why I just nodded at all times. It was in that context that conversation took place."

The current Directorate of Interior also pronounced yesterday: "This ministry trusts that the judicial investigation will clarify what happened and debug the responsibilities of practices that violate the dignity of the professionals affected and against the right to receive truthful information."

Lázaro was not the only journalist from EL MUNDO who was subjected to surveillance by the Ministry of the Interior with the PP in the Government. The former head of the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard (UCO) of the Civil Guard, Colonel Manuel Sánchez Corbí, passed a report to the Secretary of State for Security on the then editor of this newspaper in the Valencian Community of Juan Nieto and his hypothetical and false intimate relations with prosecutors and judges investigating cases against the PP.

News signed by Fernando Lázaro in EL MUNDO on August 8, 2015

THE EXCLUSIVES

THE PUBLICATION. On August 8, 2015, Fernando Lázaro signed the publication that unnerved Interior. It so happens that since 2013, this newspaper had signed exclusives on the Bárcenas case. All occurred at a very delicate time for the Popular Party as the former treasurer threatened to pull the blanket.

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