The New York Times - 30.07.2019

A8 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALTUESDAY, JULY 30, 2019

MADRID — Over more than 20
years as a Spanish police commis-
sioner, José Manuel Villarejo
rubbed shoulders with politicians,
judges, journalists, aristocrats
and business leaders. He was dec-
orated six times, including for
helping Spain fight terrorists.
Still, he was a relatively unknown
figure to the Spanish public.
All of that changed 20 months
ago, after he was arrested.
Today the onetime police hero
sits at the center of a tangle of 10
investigations by Spanish pros-
ecutors. They accuse him of hav-
ing worked an illicit and lucrative
sideline for years as a secret fixer
for Spain’s rich and powerful, who
they say used his services to spy
on their rivals and smear their en-
emies.
With his trim white beard, dark
glasses and cap, Mr. Villarejo, 67,
is now one of Spain’s most recog-
nized faces. But it is his voice that
has sent shock waves through
nearly every part of the Spanish
establishment.
Mr. Villarejo secretly recorded
his numerous dealings. Even as
he sits in jail, snippets of those
conversations are surfacing in the
Spanish news media. The leaks
have made it clear that the retired
police commissioner may well
have dirt on just about everyone
who is anyone among Spain’s po-
litical and business elite.
“He recorded absolutely every-
thing — all his phone calls and
meetings — so we know that it’s a
huge archive,” said Joaquín Vidal,
the director of moncloa.com, an
online publication that has re-
leased several of Mr. Villarejo’s re-
cordings without explaining ex-
actly how it got them.
“He was somehow allowed to
operate from the shadows while
becoming a front-line actor in
some of the key events of the re-
cent history of Spain,” Mr. Vidal
said.
The recordings, combined with
Mr. Villarejo’s court testimony,
have opened a window onto a
world of dirty tricks at the top
reaches of power in Spain. They
have spawned numerous investi-
gations, including whether
Spain’s former conservative gov-
ernment used a special “patriotic
police” — a secretive unit working
for the Interior Ministry — to tar-
nish political opponents.
Mr. Villarejo learned his way
around the underworld while sta-
tioned in the Basque region, as
part of an antiterrorism unit re-

sponsible for dismantling the sep-

aratist group ETA, for which he re-

ceived his first medal in the 1970s.

He then spent a decade on leave

from the police, dedicating him-

self to unspecified business activi-

ties, before rejoining the police in

Madrid in the 1990s and resuming

his rise up the ranks. But his un-

dercover work also stretched far

beyond Spain.

His career began to unravel in

2016 after investigators stumbled

across millions of euros that they

say Mr. Villarejo had hidden off-

shore.

Among their discoveries, pros-

ecutors say, Mr. Villarejo was paid

5.3 million euros (about $5.9 mil-

lion) from the government of

President Teodoro Obiang

Nguema Mbasogo — who has

been in power in Equatorial Guin-

ea, a former Spanish colony, since

1979 — to help the African leader

tarnish his political opponents.

Since Mr. Villarejo’s arrest,

judges have frozen millions of eu-

ros’ worth of assets controlled by

companies that he and associates

used to buy properties in Spain, as

well as a hotel in Punta del Este,

Uruguay’s fashionable beach re-

sort.

Today, prosecutors are pursu-

ing charges against him, including

bribery and money laundering.

About 50 other people, including

some other police chiefs, have also

been indicted in the sprawling se-

ries of investigations.

Mr. Villarejo denies the accusa-

tions and says his companies

were set up as part of his under-

cover work, mandated by the

highest levels of government.

In fact, he says he carried out

his work on behalf of the Spanish

state. He has portrayed himself as

a loyal soldier of the Spanish gov-

ernment, its police and even its se-

cret service, which he says has

now jettisoned and betrayed him.

“There has been an attempt to

demonize him as the public enemy

No. 1 when it is exactly the oppo-

site,” Mr. Villarejo’s lawyer, Anto-

nio José García Cabrera, told re-

porters in January.

“Mr. Villarejo forms part of the

state structure, he has helped po-

litical parties and governments in

the missions that he was assigned

as an undercover agent,” the law-

yer said. “If things have to come

out, then everything should come

out and be made public.”

That defense has deepened

questions of whether parts of the

Spanish state and government im-

properly deployed members of

the police and security services to

smear and attack opponents.

“This is a very serious scandal,”

said Diego Muro, a Spanish lec-

turer at the University of St An-

drews in Scotland.

The big question, he said, is

whether Mr. Villarejo’s activities

provide “proof that there is a ‘deep

state’ that governs in the shad-

ows.’’

In a television interview shortly

before entering jail, Mr. Villarejo

said that he was ready to disclose

his secrets “before I suffer a traf-

fic accident.” At the time of his ar-

rest, the police and prosecutors

say, they confiscated about 20 ter-

abytes of encrypted material from

Mr. Villarejo’s computers.

It is not clear who leaked the re-

cordings. But their authenticity

has not been challenged — the

people recorded by Mr. Villarejo

have only denied wrongdoing,

rather than talking to him. Many

are paying a price already.

Dolores Delgado, Spain’s jus-

tice minister, told Parliament that

she had been the victim of “politi-

cal blackmail” by right-wing op-

ponents after a recording was

leaked in which Mr. Villarejo

asked her during a group lunch to

identify any “faggot” among her

entourage. Ms. Delgado named

Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who

is now Spain’s interior minister

and is openly gay.

In one of his recordings, Mr. Vil-

larejo talks about having seven

copies of the conversations that

relate to the monarchy’s finances.

In another, a Danish-born aris-

tocrat, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgen-

stein, who was romantically

linked to King Juan Carlos, can be

heard complaining about being

used by the monarch to hide some

of his wealth offshore.

A spokesman for the royal

household declined to comment.

Robin Rathmell — a lawyer for

Ms. Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who

has not been indicted — said, “The

abuse she suffered, as a result of

desperate attempts by senior

Spanish figures to cover up their

own financial impropriety, will

shortly be laid bare in court.”

In one recording, Mr. Villarejo

boasted of earning “a lot of cash”

to dig up dirt on behalf of the Span-

ish state against Catalan poli-

ticians, at a time when a seces-

sionist conflict was reaching a

boiling point.

That claim is now part of a court

investigation into whether Spain’s

former conservative government

also tried to tarnish opponents in

the left-wing Podemos party.

Shortly after Podemos entered

Parliament in 2015, shattering

Spain’s two-party system, the

Spanish news media published ar-

ticles about how the party and its

founder, Pablo Iglesias, were ille-

gally financed by Iranian and Ven-

ezuelan money, citing an undis-

closed police report.

The conservative party of Ma-

riano Rajoy, the prime minister at

the time, used the news to set up a

Senate commission to scrutinize

the financing of Podemos and

other rival parties.

In March, Mr. Villarejo ac-

knowledged in court having inves-

tigated Mr. Iglesias as part of a po-

lice operation. But he denied be-

ing part of a political campaign to

discredit Podemos. Mr. Iglesias

has denied receiving illegal fi-

nancing.

Some journalists have been in-

dicted as part of an investigation

into whether they helped Mr. Vil-

larejo spread fake media scandals

as part of government campaigns

to smear opponents.

But Mr. Villarejo is also accused

of spying on reporters, like Iñigo

de Barron, a financial journalist at

the newspaper El País. The jour-

nalist has said that his cellphone

was tapped by Mr. Villarejo in the

summer of 2016, while he was re-

porting on management changes

at BBVA, one of Spain’s largest

banks.

BBVA has confirmed that Mr.

Villarejo worked for the bank dur-

ing the long tenure of its former

chairman, Francisco González,

but it would not say what he was

paid for, pending the result of a

court investigation in which sev-

eral other executives of the bank

have been indicted.

Mr. González stepped down in

December, three months ahead of

schedule, just before the Spanish

news media released recordings

in which Mr. Villarejo and the

bank’s security chief can be heard

discussing their wiretapping

work.

“Villarejo seems to have be-

longed to a circle of people who be-

lieved that they were in privileged

positions where they could earn a

lot of money while benefiting from

complete impunity,” Mr. de Barron

said. “What I want to know is how

high up this illegal system

reached.”

The Voice Sending Shudders Through Spain’s Establishment

By RAPHAEL MINDER

AGENCIA EFE, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

José Manuel Villarejo, left, is accused of bribery and money

laundering. Dolores Delgado, above front row left, Spain’s justice

minister, is one of many top officials taped by Mr. Villarejo.

FERNANDO VILLAR/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

An ex-police chief

recorded decades of

spying for the rich.

ROME — Less than two months

ago, Deputy Brig. Mario Cerciello

Rega was married in a small

church in the town of Somma Ve-

suviana, near Naples, Italy.

On Monday, the nation watched

as a funeral for Brigadier Cerciello

Rega was held in the same church,

three days after he was stabbed to

death in the aftermath of a bun-

gled drug deal in Rome, where he

worked as an officer of the carabi-

nieri, or military police. The police

say that two American teenagers

who were arrested have con-

fessed to the attack.

The funeral became a state af-

fair, with Italy’s two deputy prime

ministers, Matteo Salvini and

Luigi Di Maio, and a slew of na-

tional and local officials standing

alongside his widow as the cere-

mony was broadcast on national

television. In a eulogy, Gen. Gio-

vanni Nistri, the commander of

the carabinieri corps, praised the

slain officer for demonstrating

“the values that a carabiniere

should aspire to.”

Yet even as the country

mourned, a widely circulated im-

age of one of the suspects sitting

handcuffed and blindfolded before

his police interrogation raised

questions about the validity of his

confession. The photograph has

been highlighted on social media

and in Italian news coverage,

prompting a debate over how the

Americans have been treated.

The carabinieri press office has

said that the two young men —

Finnegan Lee Elder, 19, and Ga-

briel Christian Natale Hjorth, 18 —

confessed to the attack. According

to court documents, Mr. Elder is

accused of repeatedly stabbing

Brigadier Cerciello Rega, who was

trying to retrieve a backpack that

the two Americans are accused of

stealing.

A spokesman for the military

police said on Monday that the po-

lice and the judiciary had opened

separate investigations into the

circumstances behind the photo-

graph. Carabinieri officials had

distanced themselves from the

picture in a statement issued on

Saturday, and pledged to punish

those responsible for taking and

sharing it.

Brigadier Cerciello Rega’s

death struck a nerve in Italy,

where nationalist leaders with

brash social media personas have

helped create the perception — of-

ten not borne out by facts — of a

country besieged by criminals

and drug dealers from within and

immigrants and antagonistic

neighbors from without.

Those leaders have raised up

and rallied around — and in the

case of Mr. Salvini donned the uni-

forms of — the country’s law en-

forcement, as a bulwark against

such threats.

In this climate, last week’s

killing took on a broader national

significance, and Brigadier Cer-

ciello Rega, 35, who had just re-

turned to work from his hon-

eymoon, was praised as a hero.

Before his funeral service, the

national broadcaster observed a

minute of silence on its channels

in memory of the officer, “killed in

Rome while doing his best to guar-

antee our safety,” the homage on a

simple blue screen read.

Yet there was also outcry over

the apparent treatment of the sus-

pects.

A front-page editorial in the

daily newspaper La Repubblica

on Monday said that “the macabre

exhibition” of Mr. Natale Hjorth

offended “the constitutional prin-

ciples and moral values that hold

up our democracy.”

Mr. Salvini himself weighed in,

posting a photo of the blindfolded

teenager on his Facebook page

with the caption “Victim? The

only victim is a man, a son, a hus-

band, a carabiniere, a servant of

the state.”

In the hours immediately after

the killing, Mr. Salvini was among

several Italian lawmakers to

spread an ultimately unfounded

accusation that Brigadier Cer-

ciello Rega’s assailants were two

North African men. A barrage of

racist invective followed.

On Monday, the Italian news

media argued over whether the

photograph of Mr. Natale Hjorth

in custody could compromise the

case’s outcome.

Emiliano Sisinni, Mr. Natale

Hjorth’s lawyer, said in a tele-

phone interview that his client

had not confessed to murder, but

had “admitted to other episodes”

related to the case.

He said that the treatment of his

client before his interrogation had

been in “clear violation of his

rights,” significantly undermined

the rule of law and could have af-

fected his client’s statements.

Deputy Brig. Mario Cerciello Rega, a member of the carabinieri, was stabbed to death last week.

ANDREW MEDICHINI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sorrow and Scrutiny in Rome Killing

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

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