The PSOE launches a last attempt to reopen 'Kitchen' and to investigate Cospedal for the audios with Villarejo

They consider "contemptible and inconsistent the accusations of legal fraud made" against the Prosecutor's Office by the instructor

MADRID, 14 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The PSOE has asked the Criminal Chamber of the National Court (AN) to reopen the investigation into "Operation Kitchen" and to urge the investigating judge of the "Villarejo case" to investigate the alleged role that the former general secretary of the PP María Dolores de Cospedal would have played espionage to former popular treasurer Luis Bárcenas.

The appeal filed this Tuesday, to which Europa Press has had access, is the last bullet available to the Socialists to resume the investigations. Now, it must be the Chamber that decides whether to urge the head of the Central Investigating Court Number 6, Manuel García Castellón, to continue investigating or choose to keep the investigations closed, giving free rein for the case to move towards the oral trial.

The party led by Pedro Sánchez insists in its appeal that "the indications point to the fact that María Dolores de Cospedal, then general secretary of the Popular Party, intervened directly in the strategy to make the evidence that could affect the Popular Party or her personally disappear, preventing their access to criminal proceedings" coordinated in the National Court itself.

"The new indications suggest that the meetings held between Mr. Villarejo and Mrs. de Cospedal were not simple social gatherings to have a coffee and discuss the political situation; on the contrary, the content of the audios reveals contradictions with what was stated by Dolores de Cospedal in court and refer directly to the facts investigated under the name 'Operation Kitchen'", argue the Socialists.

In this regard, the PSOE points out that "if before, without the knowledge of the new audios, it could be understood that it was not proven that the meetings were of a merely social content or related to 'Operation Kitchen', the audios provided and whose incorporation was requested, clear up any kind of doubt about its relationship with the operation and therefore the participation" of Cospedal.

In these audios, published by 'El País', Cospedal asked Villarejo, in a conversation in January 2013, to "stop" the matter of Bárcenas' "little notebook", expressing his concern that the former treasurer's papers were in his possession of journalists.

The PSOE has now gone to the Criminal Chamber after Judge García Castellón rejected on November 30 his request to investigate Cospedal and to continue with the investigations. In that order, the magistrate warned the formation that any "proto-procedural" purpose that it had as a party had no place in the procedure.

García Castellón then explained that, as he already said in a previous order in September, the support of the accusation against Cospedal was reduced "almost nuclear to a few minutes of an audio cut of which not only its origin is unknown, but also any circumstance and context".

The magistrate was especially harsh in that order with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which supported the PSOE's appeal and asked the judge to open a bis piece in this line of investigation to investigate the role of Cospedal. García Castellón accused the Public Ministry of looking for "a sort of mirror image", assuring that "this claim is closer to the figure of legal fraud than to the function of the Public Ministry."

In its appeal, the PSOE describes as "absolutely despicable and inconsistent the accusations of legal fraud made against the Public Prosecutor's Office and the instructions on what their obligations are, by whom ex officio, should have taken the initiative" are inopportune. That is why, additionally, they ask the Chamber to force the withdrawal of these expressions from the order because, in their opinion, "they erode the already deteriorated image of justice."

"Insinuating that it is a claim closer to the figure of legal fraud, questioning the legality of the actions of the Public Prosecutor's Office and more in this specific case, seems absolutely inadmissible to us. Because the Public Prosecutor's Office does not request it, This popular accusation requests it. The only thing the Prosecutor's Office does, to the best of its knowledge and belief and in the exercise of its functions, is to support the claims of this party because it considers them perfectly adjusted to the law, "explain the Socialists.

Finally, the PSOE considers it essential that the judge "agree ex officio the denied proceedings and require the affected media to provide the recordings they have" and that are related to Cospedal.