The spokesperson for ERC in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, argues that the statements by former ministerial adviser Koldo García—where he claims that the PP offered him economic compensation in exchange for facilitating data that would help bring down the Executive led by Pedro Sánchez—show that "the network continues to work."
Rufián has spoken in this way in an interview on "La Séptima," reported by Europa Press, after being asked about the words of Koldo García, who was sentenced to 19 years in prison for the "mask case," and who reiterated on "Cadena SER" that he received money offers from the PP. He was also asked about reports that point to a digital outlet as the alleged party responsible for funding García’s defense.
"The network starts working again," Rufián has said, adding that depending on which digital outlets are at the service of a political, judicial, police, and evidently media power full of propagandists, more than journalists, who have mafia-like practices," Rufián has said.
Along these lines, he has pointed out that all of the Congressional investigative commissions in which he has taken part over the last ten years "had to do with PP corruption" and that "in all of them there was a digital outlet at the service" of that party "that was in the network," emphasizing that "digital power is terribly powerful."
Reference to Operation Kitchen and to the Bárcenas case
Asked directly whether it would surprise him that the PP was behind the statements by Koldo García against Sánchez or against former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the ERC leader linked it to one of the episodes of the well-known "Operation Kitchen."
Specifically, he recalled that, in the context of that operation allegedly designed from the Ministry of the Interior under the mandate of Mariano Rajoy, "there was an actor who came in dressed as a priest" at the home of the former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas to "destroy evidence" that could implicate party officials in corruption plots, and that he also positioned himself as a chauffeur for the former manager to someone else with the goal of spying on him.
"That is to say, that this is nothing new," he stressed about the agreement confessed by Koldo García. "The water wets, the sun comes up every day, and there are media outlets here at the service of the PP and Vox," Rufián concluded.