The retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo has assured this Wednesday in the Congress of Deputies that the Zaplana case was “a CNI operation” against the former president of the Generalitat and minister of the Aznar government, Eduardo Zaplana.
In his new appearance before the Kitchen commission of Congress, Villarejo has also indicated the hand of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) after the intervention of the Banca Privada d'Andorra (for which Mariano Rajoy is being investigated in a Court of the Principality) and It has been confirmed that the Gürtel case was “a political operation, which went very well for the PSOE”.
“Thanks to Rubalcaba, he did not get any further, because he did not want to destroy his party [PP], but only to weaken it a bit,” the commissioner added, addressing the people's deputy Luis Santamaría.
[The CNI used “a Syrian confidant” to “destroy Eduardo Zaplana,” according to Villarejo]
Already in his appearance in October 2021, Commissioner Villarejo assured that the CNI used a Syrian confidant to “destroy” the former minister and former president of the Valencian Generalitat Eduardo Zaplana.
He was alluding to the Syrian citizen Al Naddaf Yaloud Imad, who allegedly found in an attic of the house he had rented (where Zaplana had lived several years before) several typed pages detailing the mechanics of collecting illegal commissions from the former leader of the PP.
This document, the origin of which has never been fully clarified, became the main prosecution evidence to prosecute Zaplana in the Erial case, for the alleged collection of commissions in the ITV awards and the Sedesa group's wind plan (linked to to the family of Juan Cotino).
Commissioner Villarejo has ratified this Wednesday in pointing, once again, to the National Intelligence Center (CNI) as responsible for the operation. “For delicate operations, the CNI has never trusted the Police, it has always used the Civil Guard,” he said in this regard.
[Mariano Rajoy, charged in Andorra for alleged coercion to obtain Pujol's bank details]
According to Villarejo, the CNI gave the appropriate “instructions” to Civil Guard Colonel Manuel Sánchez Corbí, then head of the Central Operating Unit (UCO).. “It has been proven, some of the conversations that Corbí has with me have come out,” he added.
The retired commissioner, the main defendant in the Tandem operation, has indicated at the parliamentary headquarters that “the same procedure” was used (the action of the Civil Guard following the “instructions” of the CNI) to provoke the intervention of the Banca Privada d' Andorra (BPA) and its Spanish subsidiary Banco Madrid, with an alert from the US financial authorities (FinCEN) for alleged money laundering.
An Andorran judge has been investigating the former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his Interior and Finance Ministers, Jorge Fernández Díaz and Cristóbal Montoro, for allegedly “extorting” the owners of Banca Privada d'Andorra (BPA) since last June. ) to obtain information on deposits of the Pujol family and other pro-independence leaders.
The Andorran judge sent a letter rogatory to Spain to notify the complaint of the Cierco family to Rajoy, Fernández Díaz and Montoro. However, the Provincial Court of Madrid attended an appeal by Mariano Rajoy last October and paralyzed the sending of documentation to the judge of Andorra, for alleged violation of procedural guarantees.