The 'positioner' of the Punic (awaiting his first sentence... acquittal?)

• GRACIANO PALOMO

Updated Monday,24April2023-15:36

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October 27, 2014 will not be forgotten as long as he lives. Alejandro de Pedro Lorca, Bilbao, 1972, two sons, computer engineer from the University of Valencia, is arrested in the framework of Operation Punic under the accusation of being one of the masterminds of the illegal financing of the Popular Party in Madrid. He will spend 58 days in preventive detention in the prison of Extremera. Officials place him in a suicide prevention module. Since then, the Bilbao requires psychiatric care.

Nine years passed until last February, already in 2023, he was prosecuted for the first time for one of the five accusatory pieces that the instructor has divided within the famous Operation Punic, macro-cause against corruption still pending judicial resolution. A month after his arrest, the two companies created with enormous success by De Pedro (EICO, positioning on the Internet and Social Networks) and MADIVA (121 headers of digital newspapers), with a total of 45 workers, are closing. In this last company wrote different well-known and active journalists, including Pilar García de la Granja, with whom Alejandro had a lot of contact in order to position his small digital products, which he would then endorse to the highest bidder. Some believe that even the then supercapo of Mediaset, Paolo Vasile.

With his companies disappeared, in medical treatment, Alejandro de Pedro writes behind bars a diary as a psychological escape to which Crónica has had access. Apart from other considerations, De Pedro refers to his professional career before his arrest. "The two companies invoiced in 2014 a total of 846,692 euros with 30 hired (90% engineers and journalists) ... Of this amount, only 17 per cent corresponded to public administrations. I had 21 live newspapers (4 million on social media)..." "He never had a political color, only professional, hence his personal link with both sides ... In this case, other interests are playing, which I do not quite understand...", they maintain in their environment. Alejandro, those close people understand, was only the computer scientist who everyone knew and who requested his professional services, from big business to politics... "Specialist in generating business on the Internet and Personal Brand, who, from now on, has no choice but to start rebuilding his own ...", they add.

In those years in which the Bilbao begins its journey, digital reputation (companies, political, economic and social leaders), and the search for positioning on the Internet (media, personal blogs, etc ...) is in mantillas. De Pedro, son of Saturnino, technical manager of computer science of Telefónica with bases in Bilbao and Valencia, together with his younger brother, also in the field, is quickly placed in the Olympus of Spanish professionals who provide solutions to these needs. Practically all the large IBEX companies – their name runs by word of mouth – request their services, as well as renowned political leaders who aspire to consolidate their institutional positions and listed companies in other countries of the world.

Who pays your shoemaker bills?

It is the essential technician. Among his first Spanish political clients (he had previously collaborated with Barack Obama, the Israeli Netanyahu, among other international leaders through Google) is José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his wife Sonsoles Espinosa, who charge him with taking care of the "digital identity" of their daughters. Then came the 2011 electoral campaign of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, Carmen Chacón and Leyre Pajín, with whom the Punic cleaner – as the leftist media have called him – collaborates closely. His fame had been in crescendo when, in 2010, De Pedro works collaborating with another company for the campaign to lendakari of Patxi López (with the essential mission that the messages of the Basque socialist had the greatest possible reflection in social networks and Google captured them). The final results, in addition to the parliamentary support of the PP, were so successful that López came to power in the País Vaco and was able to live in Ajuria-Enea.

Who did De Pedro invoice for all these works for PSOE leaders? The invoices were sent to the socialist headquarters in Madrid's Calle Ferraz and, in fact, were paid on time. It is true that contracts on certain occasions, as in the case of Zapatero and his daughters, were signed by aides of the then President of the Government. In fact, on the hard drives of computers are, today, invoices for reputation work with Angelica Rubio, who at that time officiated as press chief of Rodríguez Zapatero. The effectiveness in the objectives of the cleaner runs by word of mouth through the centers of power (official and business) and provides its services not only in practically all political formations (except for Podemos), but also in a large number of companies listed on the Stock Exchange.

Curiously, during the first trial held a month ago, neither the private accusation of the PSOE (obviously), nor the prosecutor Carmen Cerdá refer at any time or ask about the professional link of the computer scientist with leaders of the PSOE; only of the PP. His link with the Punic from the first moment, had already destroyed his life.

As is known, Operation Punic -October 2014- is the name given to the police operation carried out by the UCO at the request of the judge of the National Court Eloy Velasco on alleged corruption in leaders of the Madrid PP for charging commissions to contractors of works, part of whose money theoretically was going to finance this party in the Community of Madrid. 51 people were arrested, including politicians, mayors and businessmen. Eighty others were later charged.

Cash payments from the CNI

From that time are also the orders that the National Intelligence Center (CNI) makes to the considered already first Spanish guru in Internet issues. In two basic lines for the security of the State: radicalism (ETA and jihadism) and Catalonia, given that the independentistas had hired a foreign service to position in Google everything that suited the Catalan paradise and highlight in the search engine those news that left Spain as a wink. UCO researchers discovered 82,000 euros in cash in the guru's house, which came from the reserved funds of La Casa. General Sanz Roldán, then director of the CNI, sent a letter to the court, limiting himself to invoking Article 51. Of Law 11/2002 of May 6 that regulates the activities of the Center. It is Judge Velasco who puts this money as criminal and it is his substitute García Castellón who lifts the crime and only keeps it blocked in the absence of payment of a future fine.

The digital positioner of the Punic comes into contact with the leaders of the PP at the end of 2011, when 95% of the municipalities of the Community of Madrid pose under the wings of the tern. The secretary general of the Madrid PP, Francisco Granados, has heard about Alejandro's skills and hires him for the PP in Madrid. He even does work at the same time for Ruiz-Gallardón and Esperanza Aguirre, enemies to the death, so that their respective environments warn him not to tell the one that he worked for the other and vice versa... In fact, he also later worked for Ana Botella, who would become mayor of Madrid, later dismissed.

Alejandro de Pedro during his statement in the trial for the Leonese piece of the Punic Operation.There he had already spent 58 days of preventive detention after which he needed treatment / NATIONAL COURT

It is from 2011, when the big IBEX are already on his payroll, Telefónica, Iberdrola, Mediaset or ACS, and Alejandro de Pedro, with his 121 digital, many of them local that work as a shot (MADIVA) and his other brand EICO, decides to work for the PP, initially in Valencia, his city of residence, and later in the Community of Madrid. Through José Antonio Alonso Conesa (PSOE) he meets the businessman/builder David Marjaliza and this in turn introduces him to Francisco Granados, then authentic 'number two' of Aguirre.

It is Granados, general secretary of the party, who summons him to a meeting with the different candidates in the CAM. For the training and help in their digital specialty to these candidates, he passed a bill of 50,000 euros per contract, which released the Madrid PP.

IN THE UNDERWORLD

At that time, he is 41 years old, life smiles at the digital computer executive who extends his companies in other countries without realizing that the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard is already on his heels in the thread of the investigations carried out against Granados and Marjaliza and records his conversations with agents of the CNI itself. The empire crumbles as soon as the teletypes vomit that he has been arrested in the Punic framework by agents under the orders of Judge Velasco. The magistrate will request letters rogatory from all countries where the stamp appeared in his passport.

The interception of his communications puts under police suspicion everyone who passes through his WhatsApp. Such interceptions give rise to ill-fated judicial misunderstandings; perhaps the most relevant of them all was when the agents of the UCO confuse in a conversation with De Pedro, two women journalists with the same name and first surname. Initially, the formidable journalist Pilar García Muñiz (then presenter of a news program on TVE, today on the COPE chain) gets into the garlic to the surprise of the entire media community that knows of her neatness. It takes several weeks for the Madrid reporter to undo the wrong before the judge. In reality, the recordings correspond to another journalist named Pilar surnamed García de la Granja, who did nothing before the judicial and police authorities to undo the wrong, according to different sources. He used a mobile phone from the United States because, apparently, he was living in New York before returning to Spain. Over time, he said he did not know the defendant with whom he obviously interrupts any communication.

The first investigating judge of the case, the Bilbao Eloy Velasco, is convinced that De Pedro has set up a "digital chiringuito" to beat politicians and large companies. It distributes charges to troche and moche and keeps him 58 days in preventive detention "without bail". Velasco was in a peculiar situation for some. He had been director general of Justice in the governments of Zaplana and Camps, and with the latter former president of the Generalitat, it would not end well. De Pedro reiterates ad nauseam to the disbelief of the honourable Member that he is a reputable professional who has many clients in Spain and abroad; that he has only received money for work done legally. The judge doesn't believe him. Already in prison, desperate and under medical surveillance, De Pedro is in the prison of Estremera with Granados. The former counselor tries to calm a desperate computer scientist." ... You have nothing to do with all this...", he tells her.

GARCÍACASTELLÓN ARRIVES

Once Judge Velasco decided to move to another square, the matter passes into the hands of the head of court number 6 of the National Court, the Valladolid Manuel García Castellón, who begins to dismiss many of the accused. More than 80 were left out of the cause, most of them politicians such as Lucía Fígar, Esperanza Aguirre, Ignacio González, Arturo Torró; councilors of the city of Valencia, Ana Botella, Pedro Antonio Sánchez, in addition to De Pedro's own younger brother and his mother-in-law.

García Castellón, however, keeps the head of EICO/MADIVA prosecuted in five different pieces in which he divides the Punic. One of its own, on the illegal financing of the PP of Madrid for an invoice made and collected of 50,000 euros; another on the orders made in Cartagena (Murcia) by the then mayor and senator Pilar Barrero who, finally, is acquitted by judgment of the Supreme Court and with civil liability of zero euros. Another in which are Lucía Fígar, already uninvestigated, García-Vinuesa and Raúl Baquero; and, finally, the one related to the Diputación de León when the late Isabel Carrasco presided over the institution. The latter is the one that gave rise to the first trial that is about to know sentence.

Acquaintances close to the engineer maintain that De Pedro has received many pressures to say what he was not willing to say "because the facts do not respond to the truth." Including threats to charge his wife (worker in their companies), his mother-in-law (partner of MADIVA) and the secretary of the company for the sole crime of preparing invoices for the Community of Madrid.

For the trial, as witnesses, many personalities and professionals passed. Among them, the president of ACS and Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez and senior officials who were from Telefónica. When the prosecutor asks Florentino if De Pedro has asked him for money to finance the PP campaign, the president answers, somewhat angry...

"But, listen, I don't know if you know that I'm the president of a publicly traded company...

While waiting for his first sentence -which will be relevant to the rest of the cases still pending trial-, he awaits the return of his passport and the unblocking of his accounts, Alejandro de Pedro has seen how those who nine years ago begged him to fix his bad image on the Internet or position their names and companies in Google, boy do not know him or turn their backs on him when they bump into him when they coincide in the collection of their respective cars in any of the parking lots in Madrid. It happens with some frequency. Sic transit gloria mundi!

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