José Manuel Villarejo, a Spanish judge, has expanded an investigation into an illegal network that has spied millions of politicians, business leaders, journalists and judges for over 20 years, in exchange for payments from wealthy clients. At the center of the case is José Manuel Villarejo, 67 years, a former police chief who was arrested in November of the 2017 for having carried out illegal wiretapping and remains in pre-trial detention.
Prosecutors accuse Villarejo of running an illegal information gathering company that has violated the privacy of hundreds of unsuspecting citizens. The latter have been targeted by corporate competitors and wealthy individual customers. Many of Villarejo's goals were eventually blackmailed by the recipients of the information gathered by the former police chief and his network.
The court heard this week that the defendant maintained a vast network of informants with whom he had worked during his time in the police force. These informants worked for telecommunications service providers, for the banking sector and even for Agencia Tributaria, Spain's tax revenue service. They are accused of providing the Villarejo network with information that has helped him achieve his goals, such as confidential tax declarations, personal telephone call subscriber registers, bank account numbers, and asset ownership lists. It is believed that several Spanish customers have been among the customers of Villarejo, as well as the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, one of the largest Spanish banks.
On Wednesday, the court heard five active police officers and an employee of Agencia Tributaria, who testified that they had worked for the Villarejo network. The six men testified of the so-called Operation KITCHEN, which targeted Luis Bárcenas, a senator and treasurer of the Conservative Party Partido Popular, known as PP, or the People's Party.
The purpose of the KITCHEN operation was to intercept Bárcenas' communications without acquiring a judicial mandate, witnesses said. In 2018 Bárcenas was jailed for 33 years for his role in the so-called Gürtel case, the biggest corruption scandal in modern Spanish history, which has toppled the conservative government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in July of last year. The process continues.