The former Secretary General of the PP, María Dolores de Cospedal, admitted this Thursday before the National High Court (AN) tribunal, which is trying the 'Operation Kitchen', that she had several meetings with the retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, one of the accused in the case. However, she denied at all times having given him any "assignment" and stressed that she limited herself to asking him "questions".
"I asked him questions, but not orders. They are different things," he indicated during his statement in the trial over the alleged parapolice device promoted from the Ministry of the Interior under the Government of Mariano Rajoy to steal documentation from the former treasurer of the PP, Luis Bárcenas, relating to party leaders, in full judicial process over the possible existence of a slush fund in the party.
During the investigation phase, both Cospedal and her then-husband, businessman Ignacio López de Hierro, were charged for their alleged involvement in 'Kitchen', although the investigation was provisionally dismissed for both. At the start of the oral hearing, the PSOE, acting as the private prosecution, requested the suspension of the trial in order to re-charge Cospedal, a request that the court ended up dismissing.
The former PP leader has detailed that it was López de Hierro who put her in contact with Villarejo, given that "he had an interest" in meeting her. "It seemed fine to me to meet him and I met him," she stated before the magistrates.
Cospedal has rejected that the former police chief provided her with information about the progress of the investigations into the Gürtel case. "Neither did I ask him nor did he inform me, and I don't think he had the capacity to do so," she assured.
Up to nine meetings and concern over leaks
The also former Minister of Defense has pointed out that she met with Villarejo "eight or nine times" and that in those meetings they discussed, among other issues, "some leaks from a secret investigation that affected" the former mayor of Valencia Rita Barberá, with the aim of "knowing how they were happening", since "they were detrimental to her, apart from not being true".
According to his version, Villarejo told him that he "had the possibility of accessing the press, that he was very good friends with journalists" and added that he "would try to find out".
Likewise, Cospedal has indicated that, at a stage when the PP was in opposition, there was "more than well-founded suspicion" within the party that they were being "spied on" from the Ministry of the Interior. In that context, the commissioner would have conveyed to him that he could find out "something" because "journalists know many things" and because he had "a police friend" who could find out.
The former minister recalled that Villarejo presented himself to her as "a police officer on leave who had companies and had just been decorated by the then Minister of the Interior", Jorge Fernández Díaz, also accused in the proceedings. Cospedal explained that "he was a person who seemed very well regarded in his Corps, in the Police". "In hindsight, things are different," she added.
In her testimony, Cospedal defended Fernández Díaz's career, whom she described as "a very distinguished militant" of the Catalan PP and whom she has always thought was "a straight and upright person". "He has suffered a lot, moreover," she concluded.