Retired curator José Manuel Villarejo sat down with ABC after touring the vicinity of Torre Picasso, in the financial heart of Madrid and its headquarters for three decades. In the first look that he grants to a national media since he was released from prison, in 2021, disputed for three hours with the resignation of someone who, having pulled the strings, he no longer has fate in his hands. He awaits a sentence in the National Court that could send him back to jail.
-According to you, the CNI recorded their actions and then gave them the tapes. Hence your file.
- Indeed. Most of the time they were delivered to me at home. They were hackers, who called themselves engineers from the cryptographic center. They would go home and on some media of various terrestrials, they would open and close with some programs that were also from the Internet, free, as a guarantee that these recordings would never be used and that I would have control over them.
-How did it work?
They usually used the phone. Sometimes, like the interview you saw with Mrs. Corinna, I had another team.
-You will concede that it is a controversial version, having tapes from more than thirty years ago…
-The inertia that exists in all of us who are intelligence agents is to record all our interventions. The microtapes were sometimes equipment that they left me, but it is also true that I took the initiative for some of the recordings.
- With what good?
-For always own use. Proof of this is that until fut was stopped, the existence of that file was never known.
-He said you have a friend who had recorded Corinna Larsen. “Seven copies abroad” and one on hand in case they were going to arrest him. He thought that he served him to avoid a criminal case?
-I never thought that taking actions as an intelligence agent would lead to criminal actions. I heard that a proof of my work was precisely that documentary file.
"They planted me out of jail in exchange for information to lynch the Crown"
That file was discussed in the gossip in Madrid but Pandora's box was not opened until July 2018, when Villarejo had been in provisional prison for seven months accused, among other crimes, of international money laundering and bribery.
-Did you pull contacts to try to get out of prison?
-There was no need to pull contacts, concluding to me. As soon as the motion of censure happened and María Dolores (Delgado) was appointed Minister of Justice, she began to receive visits from a couple of judges and prosecutors, very correct and very educated people who offered the possibility of leaving in exchange for me giving information. of this or that thing. And I said, I'm ready. The only thing that he has denied me has participated in was a lynching by the Crown. I said that it was not, that it was a mistake on the part of the Socialist Party, if that was the intention, because it had always been a serious institutional and State party.
'Who do you think wanted to participate in a Crown lynching operation?'
-I think someone very close to the President of the Government.
"Garzón and Delgado could have done something more for me if they really wanted to help me"
It is heavy that Villarejo denies having anything to do with that leak and even has a sober theory of the origin that points to a prosecutor and a journalist, the audios of Corinna Larsen that would end up causing an investigation of Don Juan Carlos and later, his move to Abu Dhabi , came to light on those dates, on July 11.
-Even so, relations with the Ministry of Justice continued to be maintained and that is when in September, suddenly, out of nowhere, a medium called moncloa.com came out and they filtered the famous meal that I had with the Minister of Justice when It was a prosecutor, María Dolores. What I found out later, and obviously I have no proof, is that Sanz Roldán convinced the Defense Minister, who was not very friendly with Delgado, that she was trying to get me to talk about the Crown. It was a missile to try to get her out of the way
-Since then?
-Until I got out of prison, the emissaries who claimed to be from the Prosecutor's Office systematically tried to get me to tell them something about Mrs. Delgado or Mr. Garzón and I would be released immediately, and I said 'never'. And I have not spoken nor will I speak anything against them, although I have my personal opinion that I understand that they could, really if they had been interested in helping me, have done something more for me.
-The leaks have continued to occur. Didn't you keep copies of all that, not even in Miami?
-People talk that I can have a copy abroad. In any case, whether or not I have it is of little use to me because as an elementary security measure, as long as I don't go to pick it up, they will not give it to anyone and unless I die, I imagine that will not come to light. I assumed that they are organizing my suicide, that is, I don't think it will be long until many more things come out.
-There was a colleague of yours from the module in prison eliminating audios and reports from Villarejo even through the bars of San Sebastián...
-He himself has declared that he did it on his own.
– And many compromising conversations have transpired…
– I don't think any of us here can stand a private conversation in a private and completely, let's say, relaxed environment. One thing then is what may or may not be valued from the point of view of when it is officially discussed. That is what everyone is concerned about, because the conversations that are in my file are all in a relaxed atmosphere, where you know how the person thinks, how he acts or how he jokes about important things.
“It was going to prison and my schedule emptied tremendously. All the people I helped with my favors disappeared."
– Do you keep any of those friendships that were recorded?
-Almost none. Much of my daily work, as seen in my personal diary, was to do favors. It was going to prison and my schedule emptied tremendously. My family, my wife and my nine-year-old daughter, had to live on the charity of my brothers, very few friends and my children. All the people that I helped with my favors disappeared. It absolutely disappeared.
-What did you think when you saw yourself entering jail?
I have always tried to have a sense of humor. If I had been there for two, three, or four months, I would have found it a very interesting experience. There are very honorable people in there. It was almost four years, they spent with the joke. But it suited me. Music and reading saved me, I think.
-When he left prison, he predicted a "catharsis", but the pillars of the State remain where they were.
-I think there are some catharses out there that are being known, but come on, I was referring to my statements. I declared absolutely everything since it came out. Another thing is that for unknown reasons, considering part of the Tandem case as state secrets, with pieces that open and close without my lawyer knowing it.
“If I had made money from police information, I would not have made gold, but rather 'orísimo'”
Those pieces, which in the fall of 2018 were a couple because the judge in the case, Diego de Egea, did not see it clearly, have reached 36 and most follow the same incriminating pattern: an active commissioner whose companies are hired by individuals for, possibly, a coup of data from police bases, getting traps from third parties with whom they have a conflict.
-For more than ten decades we have been operating on a similar basis, based in the Torre Picasso. Why do you think that until 2017 nobody did anything against you for it?
-Because simply and simply it was not illegal. Another thing is that it was legal or that in some way the status of undercover agent as it is legislated, is different for each case, but there is a recent case, that of Catalonia infiltrated as an undercover agent for three years and it is not due to a specific operation . Is it that Grande-Marlaska can have coverts?
-You did not have judicial control
-Clear. Without judicial control because although when things are important, they are prosecuted, most of my intelligence notes were never prosecuted. They were information notes that I knew and they ended up in the specialized units. 90% of the intelligence information produced by even the CNI never has judicial relevance.
-He was an active commissioner, doesn't that make hiring him incompatible?
-There was no incompatibility because I never mixed my official actions with my private actions, and the information I obtained from police actions was never profitable. If not, I would not have made gold, I would have made myself 'orísimo'. Someone knew about them, made them profitable and used them for the benefit of the State. What they accuse me of is revealing secrets for having kept photocopies of call traffic or of the 347 of the Treasury. In other cases it has been seen that they are so habitable in detectives and lawyers that they have no gravity.
-How do your companies benefit the State?
– These companies served as cover to delve into issues of economic intelligence. Multinationals are a piece of Spain that must be protected.
Four of them have been seriously harmed by being called to the National Court for resorting to Villarejo's services: Iberdrola, BBVA, Repsol and Caixabank. The commissioner, in a response to his enmity with the former head of Internal Affairs, Marcelino Martín Blas, whom he accuses of allying with the CNI, explains his theory:
-The actions of Internal Affairs in my case have managed to get all the security personnel in the entire Ibex fired and now they are all CNI colonels or CNI agents, whom they manage. How curious. No?
"I don't think any of those present here can stand a private conversation in a private environment and totally, let's say, relaxed"
But in addition to the private projects there are two that would affect public funds. Kitchen, which has prosecuted the previous Interior and police leadership, and the Catalonia operation, which Villarejo talks about whenever he has the opportunity and is not prosecuted. Three pieces of the pieces of the case have already been judged and the sentence is missing. In two other trials, outside the National Court, Villarejo has been acquitted. The last one, just a month ago.
– How do you deal with the fact that he can sentence 80 years in jail?
-(Laughs) One is the time you have left. If at 71 I have to worry that they are going to sentence me to one hundred years or thirty... What I do have clear is that the Supreme Court is not going to swallow as foolishly as it has done in my case. I have assumed that they are preparing my suicide. I have assumed it and I did not care. And I have full confidence in Justice. I think it was my countryman Seneca who said to Nero 'Your power towards me is the fear that I have of you. Since I'm not afraid of you, all you have to do is kill me,' as he did. So, the only thing left for them is to eliminate me, because I'm not afraid of them, I don't even respect them.
-But your wife can also end up condemned
-No no. I understand that the jail request for my wife and my son was to put pressure on me. I trust, really. And I know that if they immediately request my admission to prison without a final sentence, it is because they know that with the dog dead, the rabies is over.
