Manuel García-Castellón, judge of the Villarejo case, has disqualified for the second time the current president of Repsol, Antonio Brufau, and the former president of CaixaBank and former vice president of the energy company, Isidro Fainé. As confirmed by legal sources to EL PAÍS, the magistrate has made this decision after carrying out new proceedings as a result of the Criminal Chamber re-indicting both in February. The judge had already filed the case against them on July 29. These investigations investigate how both companies hired Cenyt, the business group of retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, to carry out an alleged espionage operation in 2011 against Luis del Rivero, then president of Sacyr and who intended to gain control of Repsol after an agreement with the Mexican Pemex.
The resolution of García-Castellón, which also shelves the case against Repsol and CaixaBank as legal entities, emphasizes that there are no indications against the two senior managers. Through a 32-page ruling, the judge argues that the “initiative to hire Cenyt” did not come from any of them. And neither, according to the magistrate, did they know the “details” of the assignment to the commissioner. In other words, they did not know that the police officer was the provider, nor the “details” of the service he provided for both companies.
The instructor of the Hearing thus circumscribes the responsibility to the directors of Security of the two companies, Rafael Araujo (Repsol) and Miguel Fernández Rancaño (CaixaBank); and Rafael Girona, who was deputy director of Support Services at the oil company’s Corporate Security Department. The judge proposes to send the three to the bench for the alleged espionage project, in addition to Villarejo; his partner Rafael Redondo; and the commissioner Enrique García-Castaño, who supposedly collaborated with the plot and who suffered a stroke last April.
“There are no indications or suspicions from which it can be deduced that the initiative to carry out the contracting of Cenyt came from Brufau, nor that it was informed in detail of the results of the group’s efforts. [del comisario]. Maintaining this would be mere conjecture without any support, ”says the investigating judge, who adds the same about Fainé. In addition, Rafael Araujo returned to testify before the magistrate last Tuesday, when he assumed all responsibility for the assignment to Villarejo. According to Repsol’s head of security, he was the one who decided to resort to the services of the police, although he defended that he never asked him to carry out illegal maneuvers, according to legal sources.
The Criminal Chamber, when it re-indicted both in February, maintained a different thesis. The court stated that there are “indications” that the hiring of the commissioner came from the president of Repsol and that, in addition, “he was informed in detail of the results” of the steps taken by Cenyt, which included the alleged access to confidential databases . In fact, although Brufau and Fainé assure that they never knew that Villarejo was contracted, they did admit that they had a conversation in 2011 and agreed to make a move in the face of Del Rivero’s attempts to gain control of the oil company. “I suggested to Fainé that it would be good for the two corporate intelligence areas to collaborate together to further deepen the pact [entre Sacyr y Pemex]”, detailed Brufau before the judge.
Among the evidence put forward against the two top managers is a document called Chat-2.11.11, which details the content of a meeting held on November 2, 2011 in a restaurant between Villarejo and the security chiefs of the oil company and the bank. A kind of “meeting record”, to which the Prosecutor’s Office grants plausibility, where the alleged direct knowledge of Fainé and Brufau of the espionage assignment is reflected. “But, the mere reference of Villarejo [a ambos] in one of its documents is not enough, by itself and without other additional elements, to maintain or agree on the imputation of any person, ”maintains the investigating judge García-Castellón.
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Cenyt received more than 400,000 euros from Repsol and CaixaBank for this assignment, dubbed the Wine Project. But, when filing the case against these legal entities, Ibex 35 companies, the judge stressed that both had “supervision and control” tools, so they met the requirements provided for in the law and were not can attribute a crime to a “deficit in this matter.” The parties may file an appeal against the decision of the magistrate.
