Now that Paesa is dead, their roles remain to be resolved.

SPAIN / By Cruz Ramiro

Arms trafficking, dirty war, ETA, GAL, Reserved Funds of the Ministry of the Interior, PSOE card, Mossack Fonseca —Panama papers—, Luxembourg and money laundering operations, documentary credits, Laotian papers, Roldán's money, operation Sokoa —sale of arms to ETA—, false documents provided by the Interior, gold and diamond trafficking in Sierra Leone, real estate investments in Brazil… All those documents, the papers of Francisco Paesa, the super agent Paco, were in an attic in Paris, with a safe included, near the Arc de Triomphe and guarded by his nephews Alfonso —who played errand boy: “Run, go and tell them”— and Beatriz García —assistant and representative: “Go and do it to me”—. Alfonso continues in Paris and Beatriz in Luxembourg.

Camoens, the code name of one of Paesa's main collaborators, confirms to El Confidencial, while sipping a Tanqueray gin and tonic and lighting his pipe, that “Paco —as his friends called Paesa— had a habit of keeping everything. And the important papers were in the safe in the attic”. He recalls that “Paco was left without a team and his latest operations show it – he refers to his arrest, along with his nephew Alfonso, in November 2011 in Sierra Leone for diamond trafficking -. He wasn't very intelligent, but he was smart, a real rascal… And in recent years he had financial difficulties”.

Camoens delves into his profile, his preferences: “He had a very good hand with women and he used them and made use of them to carry out some operations… His type was blonde, thin and above all that he could handle them. In Paris I got to know three, all the same, and they were used to rent the different apartments that he had”. Camoens wonders: “Where is the Walther PPK, caliber 9 mm, stainless steel —he's talking about a pistol— from which he never parted, his Zippo lighter and his papers”. And sentence: “These papers are very compromised and there will be many nervous people because they represent a problem for the security of the State”.

Francisco Paesa died on May 3 in a town on the outskirts of Paris, Bois-Colombes, and his only daughter, Silvia, confirmed the death. On this occasion, it was not the false certificate that the lawyer Cobo del Rosal presented in 1998 at the National Court indicating that he died of a heart attack in Thailand.. Nor will we be able to resurrect him, as we did in November 2004 in Luxembourg: “The dead are alive”. But we can tell and narrate the tricks, tricks and falsifications that he carried out during “the 60 years that he was on the wire”, as his former collaborator Camoens defines Paco's life.

Act I

“Jesus. I'm Jesus”. It was 11:30 p.m. on March 23, 1994, and on the other end of my home phone was our contact person, our man to reach the fugitive Luis Roldán, former director of the Civil Guard.. The one who called himself Jesus, a code name for various and delicate matters, was Francisco Paesa Sánchez, who died on May 3, this time for real, in a small town on the outskirts of Paris, Bois-Colombes.

On May 3, too, but on this occasion in 1994 —29 years before— we published in the newspaper El Mundo the exclusive interview with Luis Roldán, the fugitive that everyone was looking for —Police, Civil Guard, National Intelligence Center and different friendly secret services—and that they placed in different countries of the five continents. Roldán was in Paris, the land that Paco controlled and dominated.. And the former director of the Civil Guard was clear: “They are not going to deceive me like Amedo; if I go to jail I will not go alone… I have two alternatives, either shoot myself or pull the blanket”. Roldán did not shoot himself, nor did he pull the blanket because his jailer, Paesa, knew that the Algarrobo —as they called it in the Civil Guard— was worth a lot of money. Paco was the person who accompanied Roldán to room 208 of the Marignan hotel, which was next to the Champs Eliseos, where my ex-partner Manuel Cerdán and I were staying..

Everything was prepared for the interview. Two recorders and my analog cameras, digital ones didn't exist yet, Canon, one AE-1 and the other New with 24 and 50 mm lenses. Paco, the man with a thousand faces, as we described and titled Paesa on several occasions in the newspaper, was behind us, attentive to what his protégé, his hostage and, above all, “his treasure” said: he raised 1,200 millions of pesetas from Roldán —what El Algarrobo stole during the time he was director of the Civil Guard and Government delegate in Navarra— which he placed, first, in the Aresbank in Madrid, then in Singapore after passing through Luxembourg, to end up in Uruguay in a Spanish bank in a numbered account and its key matches a brand of butter. All these operations were prepared by Paco and executed by his niece, Beatriz García. Ramírez, he was very angry because the paper ran out and the press could not continue shooting and reach one million. That day, photocopies also made a killing. Some time later, when we were able to escape the controls, surveillance, wiretapping and surveillance to which the Police, Civil Guard and CNI subjected us, who were determined to find out where we did the interview with Roldán —before judge Ana Ferrer we took refuge in secrecy professional so as not to reveal—I spoke to the superagent, and as he lit a Benson & Hedges cigarette with his silver Zippo lighter—two signature Paesa items—and stared at me and pointed his index finger at me, he said: “If any something happens to me one day, you will receive a package with documentation”.

Act II

Paesa, after selling, deceiving and delivering Roldán for 300 million pesetas to the former Minister of the Interior and Justice, Juan Alberto Belloch, at the Bangkok airport —February 27, 1995— with some false documents from Laos, the country where he was supposed to Roldán had been a refugee, disappeared. These documents were prepared between Madrid and Paris. The superagent vanished until July 21, 1998 when an obituary was published in the newspaper El País that read: “D. Francisco Paesa died in Thailand on July 2, 1998, where he was cremated. Your family and your friends do not forget you”. And, in addition, thirty Gregorian masses “in the Cistercian monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña… for his soul and to comfort those who carry him in our hearts”.

From that very day I was on guard waiting for the envelope with the documents. And Roldán, nervous and fearful, saw “his money” vanish while he was serving a sentence in the women's prison of Brieva (Ávila).. Right there, El Algarrobo, who died on March 22, 2022 in Zaragoza without the millions that Paesa and other former members of the Ministry of the Interior who had participated in the operation had taken, confessed to me in one of the meetings we had that Paco was alive. because he had received, in March 1999, two postcards from Marseille, a key that he had agreed with the super agent so that he would know that he was not abandoning him. But Roldán's doubt was still present and he began to suspect that Paesa had kept the 1,200 million pesetas and even threatened to go on a hunger strike and denounce him for “cover-up”..

Meanwhile, the superagent, in collusion with his lawyer, Manuel Cobo del Rosal, who was a professor of Criminal Law —he died on January 25, 2017— and also a lawyer for the former Secretary of State for the Interior Rafael Vera in the GAL case, presented in the National Court a false death certificate of Paesa that was signed in Thailand. The certificate in question was brought to Madrid by one of Paesa's men who participated in the Roldán plot in Paris, Laos and later delivery in Bangkok, Hans Albert. Hans, a former secret agent of the former GDR, visited Cobo del Rosal and Paesa's sister, María, who worked in Congress as a civil servant. But he did not bring me the package that Paco promised me.

That is to say, the man with a thousand faces was alive and kicking and had taken advantage of one of the three passports that the Interior had provided him to put land in the middle and continue operating from the bank account he had in Uruguay and with his niece, stoned, in Luxembourg. In the office that Beatriz García had set up in Luxembourg, with the help of a Paesa partner who participated in the movement of millions from Madrid to Singapore, there was a plaque attached, which I have today as a souvenir, and which read: “Beatriz García. Attorneys. Specialized study in international tax law and company law. 2nd floor”.

And it was in that same office where we had agreed to meet Paco, the superagent, in November 2004, after Francisco Marco, Method 3 detective, and a server detected, confirmed, and graphically verified that “the dead man was alive” and was in Luxembourg in the company of a lady, blond and thin.

Beatriz argued that she could not attend the appointment because she had had an abortion and that her uncle was out of Luxembourg. The first thing was not true, we tracked the hospitals and clinics in Luxembourg with the help of two Spanish nurses who worked in the Grand Duchy and confirmed that no Beatriz García had been admitted during those days. And the second was a ruse to escape again.

act III

December 2007. Roldán has left the Brieva prison, has returned to his home, Zaragoza, and is now convinced that he will never see the money that he took irregularly and gave to Paesa again: “Now, that he is officially alive and that he has a Spanish passport with his authentic identity – the super agent used false passports and documents with great ease – to return to the State the 1,500 million he took (1,200 from Roldán and the 300 that Minister Belloch gave him) “.

At that time, Roldán lived in the house that belonged to his parents and that he was able to recover. He supported himself with a small amount of help, 600 euros, which was given to him every month by a former member of the Ministry of the Interior who acted as a bridge with Paesa so that Justice would not catch his money.. It was a kind of “don't tell on me and I'll help you” for the million dollars that he took in commission for those bank efforts.

Roldán adapted to his new life and, one day, he met Natasha, a Russian citizen, through the internet.. Shortly after, in 2010, he married her. Natasha was the widow of a senior officer in the Russian Army and it was the third marriage of Algarrobo. Paesa's life followed its path, each day with more difficulties, problems and fewer millions of people.. “Paesa rises again in Sierra Leone”.

Five years later, the scandal of the Panama papers and the offshore companies of the Mossack Fonseca law firm were uncovered. And El Confidencial revealed on April 5, 2016 an exclusive by Jesús Escudero: “The resurrection of the spy Paesa caused chaos in Mossack Fonseca”. The subtitle indicated that “the Panamanian firm exchanged emails for 10 months to find out the real identity of Francisco P. Sánchez, administrator of seven companies in the Virgin Islands”.

El Confidencial, with its revelations, confirmed and documented that Beatriz García and Francisco Paesa had become a dangerous tandem for the interests of Panamanian lawyers, who were dedicated to providing cover for politicians, drug traffickers, businessmen and other kinds. The journalist Escudero reproduced some internal emails from the Fonseca office, and one of them read: “The story that Mr.. Mendoça about Miss Garcia and her uncle is very scary. I asked him to fax something, which he has done.”.

The reporter from El Confidencial explained in his text that “the attachment to the email was the exclusive published on November 15, 2004 by the journalist Antonio Rubio in El Mundo in which he revived the spy Francisco Paesa Sánchez after having faked his death six years before”. Escudero concludes: “The appearance of the ghost, as described in an internal email from Mossack Fonseca, caused a tremendous uproar in the Panamanian law firm that ended the firm's relationship with a Luxembourg intermediary”.

Beatriz García, according to the internal notes of the Panamanian office, was an intermediary for 38 companies and Paesa was the administrator of seven companies in the Virgin Islands. Francisco Paesa Sánchez has died and Beatriz García is still in Luxembourg. El Confidencial published on May 25, 2018 that “Zaplana used the niece of the spy Paesa to hide his commissions via Luxembourg” (J. M. Olmo, V. Romero and D.. Grasso) and, a year later, in February 1920, the newspaper El Mundo pointed out that Beatriz “is investigated by the Zaplana judge for being behind alleged bribes collected by the former president of the Valencian Community”. Eduardo Zaplana was president of the Generalitat Valenciana (1995-2002) and Minister of Labor (2002-2004).

The question, now that Silvia, Paesa's daughter, who for many years did not want anything to do with superagent Paco, has appeared, is where are Paesa's papers, the Walther pistol, the silver Zippo lighter and Paesa's properties and money?

Summary. Quotes and statements from Paesa and Roldán:

4 July 1994.

Paesa: “What I have done so far, I have done in agreement with my government”.

July 27, 1995.

Paesa: “I'm not sorry wood”.

June 12, 2002.

And he becomes the man with a thousand faces.

16 September 2016.

Paesa: “I asked Roldán to return the money. Not all. Catching it takes work”.

1 March 2015.

Roldán: “Pulling the blanket is useless”.

*Antonio Rubio is the director of the master's degree at El Confidencial (Investigative Journalism, New Narratives, Data, Fact-Checking, Transparency and Artificial Intelligence) @masterelconfi