The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has appeared this Monday in the Congress of Deputies to give explanations about the so-called Cuarteles case, the judicial investigation into an alleged plot of corruption within the Civil Guard and the Irregular award of works contracts. An appearance in which he attributed this case to the stage led by the Popular Party and in which he also recalled the case of police corruption in Operation Kitchen: “During the PP governments, public resources were used inadmissibly”, has remembered.
The judge in the Cuarteles case summons the former head of the Civil Guard Command of Ávila to testify
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The head of the Interior portfolio recalled the development of the case, in which Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jarava remains accused, among others, for the alleged collection of gifts and donations by contractors who opted for contracts for works and maintenance in a dozen of commands of the Civil Guard throughout the country.
The investigation, recalled Grande-Marlaska, began in 2016. “It is a case, one more of many cases of corruption, that occur with the Popular Party in Government and with those responsible in the Ministry of the Interior.” she has explained. It was the Civil Guard in a PP government, she added, the one that launched an investigation in Internal Affairs of the body and the one that archived that information: “I insist. You stop it and order it to be archived ”, she has reproached the representatives of Alberto Núñez-Feijóo’s party in the commission. The case was prosecuted, he added, years later with the PSOE in government.
“We are witnessing an example of bad government”, he explained before attributing “authoritarianism, corruption and bungling” to the management of the PP in the Ministry of the Interior between 2011 and 2018. In those years, he has accused, “the governments of the Popular Party public resources and means, which should have been allocated to the safety of all, were used inadmissibly for partisan and spurious purposes in a manner unacceptable in a democracy.”
He then summoned the “patriotic police”, high-ranking officers of the National Police such as Eugenio Pino or José Manuel Villarejo, who have been investigated at the National Court for using police means to, among other things, favor the Popular Party. “The attempt to produce clearly false evidence against the political opposition to deactivate its work of control and alternative to cuts, anti-social policies or cases of corruption,” he said.
At this point, he alluded to Operation Kitchen, the illegal police operation used to spy on Luis Bárcenas, former PP treasurer, and try to steal evidence and recordings that were in his possession and that would harm the party. “They did not hesitate to make agents and members of the State Security Forces and Corps, whose purpose was to protect our streets, ensure security in rural areas, defend our borders or fight against terrorism or gender violence, abandon their functions and they had to dedicate themselves to tasks related to covering up their corruption scandals”, he said.
