In
2016, the PP-run Interior Ministry granted legal residency status to
a Venezuelan national who provided unverified information about the
left-wing party’s leader, Pablo Iglesias
In April
2016, with the Popular Party (PP) in power, high-ranking officials at
the Spanish Interior Ministry granted an extraordinary residency
permit to a Venezuelan national who had been cooperating as a police
informer in a political dirty war against the left-wing Podemos
party.
This
warfare is attributed to the so-called “Patriotic Brigade,” a
group of officers who allegedly engaged in irregular activities
during Mariano Rajoy’s first term in office in an attempt to damage
the reputation of the PP’s political rivals.
The
Patriotic Brigade was allegedly created within the National Police
under then-Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz. The best-known
member of this group is José Manuel Villarejo, a retired police
chief who ran a private espionage service for 20 years, and who was
arrested and placed in pre-trial detention in November 2017 as the
alleged ringleader of a corrupt police network.
Judge
Manuel García-Castellón of Spain’s High Court (Audiencia
Nacional) is now investigating whether this group is behind an
apparent dirty war against Podemos.
In
April 2017, his colleague, Judge José de la Mata, took the first
step toward uncovering the group’s activities in connection with an
unlawful attempt to incorporate damning documents into a judicial
investigation into the finances of former Catalan leader Jordi Pujol
and his family.
Now,
the Patriotic Brigade is also under scrutiny for allegedly spying on
Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias. Villarejo, the former police chief,
told the judge that his spying activities against the Podemos leader
were part of “a police investigation.”
According
to Villarejo, the police took from his possession a pen drive
containing data retrieved from a cellphone that belonged to an aide
of Iglesias. This aide reported the theft of the phone in 2016. Part
of the personal information contained on it, including messages
exchanged in an internal party chat group, were later published by
the online daily OKDiario.
Residency
permit
A
document that has been attested to by a notary, verified by police
sources, and accepted as valid by two Madrid courts, shows how the
Interior Ministry granted an individual named Carlos Alberto Arias a
one-year residency permit due to “exceptional circumstances”
involving “cooperation with police authorities.”
The
document was signed by the state secretary for security at the time,
Francisco Martínez, who has told EL PAÍS that he does not remember
Arias’ name. “I imagine that, just like so many other times, I
was given the papers, and if it is proposed by the police, I sign off
on it,” he said.
Although
the permit did not specify the nature of this cooperation, Arias
himself has declared before a notary that he had been working as an
“informer” for the Spanish police since February 2016,
contributing “all kinds of documents” about the funds that the
government of Venezuela had allegedly given to Podemos and its
leader, Iglesias.
This
money was allegedly channeled through an account at Euro Pacific Bank
in the Grenadines, a tax haven. This information has not been
verified.
“This
entire collaboration was authorized and requested by the Interior
Ministry of the government of Spain,” added Arias, who introduced
himself as the source who gave the police several unverified reports
about irregular payments to Podemos, allegedly drafted by the Cuban
secret services and by the government of Venezuela. The contents of
these reports were published by Ok Diario in May 2016.
At
that time, Podemos was doing well in the polls, and stood to play a
decisive role in the formation of a government following the December
2015 elections, when two protest parties – Podemos and
Ciudadanos – shattered Spain’s two-party system. Politicians
struggled for months to reach governing deals, and failure to do so
resulted in a new general election in June 2016, which was won by the
PP, albeit without a majority.
Iglesias’
account
In
January 2016, OkDiario also published news about the so-called Pisa
report, a fake police document with ties to the Patriotic Brigade
that asserted that the government of Iran had backed Iglesias
financially in order to launch his political career. This report
is currently under investigation at the High Court as part of the
wider probe into the affairs of the ex-police chief Villarejo.
Iglesias
himself has always denied the accusations of international funding,
and initiated legal proceedings against OKDiario. A Madrid appeals
court and the regional High Court have not attempted to determine
whether the published information is accurate or not.
“This
is a criminal network involving corrupt police officers, media
organizations and leading business people,” said Iglesias on
Wednesday, after testifying in court.
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