Court to investigate alleged state smear campaign against independence movement for first time

A court in Madrid has accepted a complaint for consideration filed by former FC Barcelona president Sandro Rosell against several former Spanish police officers in the framework of the purported state smear campaign against the Catalan independence movement. 

'Operation Catalonia' is the alleged strategy used by former conservative PM Mariano Rajoy by which he supposedly blackmailed sources to secure compromising information on pro-independence politicians. A 2016 police report confirmed the existence of this strategy. 

This is the first time that the Spanish judiciary has opted to investigate the alleged operation of Spanish politicians, civil servants, police officers, members of the judiciary, and the media against the Catalan independence movement. 

At the moment, the events can be investigated for the crimes of criminal organization, falsification of official documents, false reports, illegal detentions, and misuse of public funds, since a large part of the jobs were paid for by Spain's interior ministry, as reported by 'La Vanguardia' and 'Crónica Libre' and confirmed by the Catalan News Agency (ACN).

In September, Spain's Congress voted in favor of launching an investigation into 'Operation Catalonia.' Three months earlier, the neighboring country of Andorra announced an inquiry into Rajoy and two of his former ministers, Jorge Fernández Díaz and Cristóbal Montoro, accused of pressuring bank officials in 2014 into providing them with account details of former Catalan president Jordi Pujol and his family and then-president Artur Mas as well as then-vice president Oriol Junqueras.

According to the documentation to which ACN has seen, the 13th District Court of Madrid accepted the complaint in October and asked the prosecution if it saw any inconvenience in investigating the case. In January, the public body gave its approval and has now asked the National Police for the details of the defendants in order to summon them.

The complaint is directed against the former commissioner of the National Police, José Manuel Villarejo, the former inspector and partner of Villarejo, Antonio Jiménez Raso, another inspector Alberto Estévez, and an ex-agent of the FBI assigned to the American embassy in Madrid, Marc Varri.

In fact, Varri and Estévez would have collaborated to ask the United States for an international rogatory commission for Rosell's alleged bribes to the Brazilian Football Association that saw him be held in pre-trial detention for two years for a case for which he was later acquitted.

According to the complaint, to which ACN also had access, 'Operation Catalonia' would have started in November 2012 when the then-leader of the Catalan People's Party, Alícia Sánchez-Camacho, gave Villarejo a list of ten names of pro-independence politicians and businessmen to investigate them and find compromising information against them.

Rosell filed the complaint against Villarejo following various journalistic reports, interviews with the retired commissioner himself, and his leaked diaries and audios.