AN orders the judge in the Villarejo case to investigate the pressure on Bárcenas and his lawyer by people close to the PP

The Criminal Chamber does not link this investigation to the Kitchen piece since its investigation has already concluded

MADRID, 3 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Criminal Chamber of the National Court has upheld an appeal from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and has revoked the file of piece 36 of the 'Tandem case' that was opened to investigate the alleged pressure exerted on the former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas and his former lawyer, Javier Gómez de Liaño, so that information about said political formation linked to the Gürtel plot would not be published.

In the order, to which Europa Press has had access, the Chamber considers the decision of the Central Investigating Court number 6 of last November "premature" in which, at the same time that it opened that separate piece, it agreed to the provisional dismissal.

The court indicates that the file is not appropriate since there are investigative procedures requested by the Public Ministry that have not been carried out and that, as the Prosecutor's Office shows, in this procedure there are "indications of the commission of a crime".

The Chamber, however, rejects the incorporation of this piece 36 to the 'Kitchen' piece "so as not to hinder the already very advanced processing" of this last case, whose investigation has been concluded, and in which the alleged operation mounted to steal documentation from Luis Bárcenas.

As indicated in the prosecutor's appeal, which the Chamber echoes, this piece 36 was opened as a result of the inhibition of the Investigating Court 2 of Marbella agreed after some proceedings in which the entry and search had been ordered in the home of Halit Sahitaj and Jana Kleiner. Sahitaj, according to legal sources consulted, was a kind of mediator who had a connection with the leader of the Russian mafia Zakhar Kalashov.

The Chamber's order recalls that as a result of said entry and search, the investigators had access to an email address containing four audio files that, on October 20, 2014, were sent, from the address email corresponding to the professional office of lawyer Javier Gómez de Liaño.

Said audio files, the Chamber indicates, paraphrasing the order to initiate preliminary proceedings of February 2022 of the Malaga court, "would reveal in an indicative way, a commission carried out by third parties linked to the Popular Party in order to obtain, through pressure Luis Bárcenas and his lawyer at the time in the investigation known to Gürtel, Javier Gómez de Liaño, that no compromising or harmful information related to said investigation come to light for the Popular Party".

As a result of these audios, the Marbella court officiated the Police to issue a report and identify the three interlocutors in the four audio files sent to the email address of Gómez de Liaño, in the case of José Luis Moreno Cela, Mónica Gil Manzano and Juan Ramón Dias Moro. The 'Tandem' prosecutor asked to summon the three as investigated once their appeal was estimated and this piece was reopened.

The same police report revealed information related to Halit Sahitaj, in whose house the audios were found, "concretised in notes made by the retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo regarding alleged payments received by Gómez de Liaño that could be compromising -- to which, in addition, reference is made in the four audio files in order to use them as elements of pressure--".

"Likewise, efforts made in 2014 by José Manuel Villarejo himself with Halit Sahitaj to obtain information on said alleged payments were revealed," says the Chamber, which points out that these efforts would have also been referred by the commissioner to the former Secretary of State of the Interior Francisco Martínez -- accused in Kitchen --.

The Criminal Chamber criticizes that the investigator at first agreed to accumulate this investigation in the Kitchen piece and that later "without carrying out any new procedure (...) he reached a totally opposite conclusion" and made "a radical turn" separating the matter in a separate part.

It regrets that this decision is justified by an assessment of the indicative solidity of the facts referred to in those audios sent to Gómez de Liaño. And he remembers that if there was no connection with the Kitchen, perhaps a separate piece could not have been created either because it would not have any connection with the 'Tandem' cause either and should have been inhibited.