The instructor shelved the piece as he did not see any indication that there was a commission from the retired curator
MADRID, 2 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former owner of the Method 3 detective agency Francisco Marco has asked the judge of the National Court (AN) who investigates the private businesses of José Manuel Villarejo to clarify what facts he has investigated in the separate piece related to the entries and records made in 2013 in the company and the subsequent arrests to decide whether to appeal the file agreed by the magistrate himself last October.
In a letter, to which Europa Press has had access, Marco addresses the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 6, Manuel García Castellón, in order to explain whether in this separate piece number 27 of ‘Tándem’ “only about the possible crime of revealing secrets” or if “the investigation into the possible crimes of illegal detention and false accusation” allegedly committed by retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo Pérez, among others, has also been included.
The magistrate decided to file the piece on October 17 as it had not “been possible to specify the indications of criminality that led to its opening.” In it, the instructor tried to determine if behind the entries and records made in 2013 in Method 3 and the arrest of its owner, Francisco Marco, there was a commission to the commissioner’s business group, CENYT, to obtain the information stored at the detective agency.
García Castellón highlighted that “the existence of no order, budget, service or execution project in this regard had been verified, which differentiates this piece from the rest”, in which “the same contracting pattern is analyzed by the CENYT Group”, which would consist of commissions from private clients to Villarejo that he would carry out with his corporate network but using the police means at his disposal.
Marco recalls that when these proceedings were initiated on July 14, 2020, “the need to open a new piece was indicated to investigate ‘a plurality of facts that would have their origin in the complainant’s disagreements with Antonio Giménez Raso, who would use the services of José Manuel Villarejo to interfere in the activity of his company and that will determine a series of blackmails and extortions through the use of CENYT’s services.
The owner of the detective agency asks for clarification of what has been instructed to date “in order to determine” whether to appeal the order of dismissal and file or to decide whether to go “to the competent court so that the crimes of illegal detention can be investigated and false accusation allegedly committed by José Manuel Villarejo Pérez”.
In addition to insisting that no evidence of criminality had been found, the judge himself explained in the aforementioned filing order that the facts investigated so far in this piece 27 overlapped with two other judicial investigations. On the one hand, the one carried out by the Barcelona courts on the recording of the aforementioned conversation that took place in July 2020 in the Barcelona restaurant of La Camarga between Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, the then leader of the Catalan PP, and Victoria Álvarez, former partner of the eldest son of former president Jordi Pujol.
The judge also recalled that, although this investigation was based on a complaint filed by Marco, where he pointed out that the searches at the headquarters of Method 3 in Madrid and Barcelona and his subsequent arrest were the result of Villarejo’s alleged maneuvers to seize sensitive information handled by the detective agency, which could be crimes of discovery and disclosure of company secrets, are crimes that coincide with those aired in piece 3.
Piece number 3 is ‘Land’, one of the three that have been judged in the last year in the National High Court and that are now pending sentence. During the oral hearing, the focus was on a report on the estate of the deceased businessman Luis García Cereceda that Method 3 prepared for his widow, Silvia Gómez Cuétara, within the framework of a family dispute over the inheritance, and which ended in hands of Villarejo.
The closure of the piece came after García Castellón took a statement from a former Method 3 detective: Julián Peribáñez. The declaration of him as injured, indicated the instructor, did not reveal “sufficient circumstantial elements to corroborate the existence of the facts that are investigated in this piece (27) or to rule out duplicity or procedural overlapping” with number 3 .
In that judicial appearance, Peribáñez said that he collaborated with the Internal Affairs Unit (UAI) of the National Police –the one in charge of said searches and arrests– at its request but denied any relationship with Villarejo. In this sense, he assured that he never coincided with the commissioner, according to sources present in that statement.
