The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, slipped this Thursday in the Congress of Deputies one of the reasons why, in the last two days, he has repeatedly stated that “the objective reasons” that determined the loss of confidence in Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos that led, in May 2020, to his sudden dismissal as head of the Civil Guard in Madrid that last Tuesday was annulled by the Supreme Court. Grande-Marlaska, who was responding to a question from the PP about the recent resignation of the general director of the armed institute, María Gámez, linked this lack of confidence to the role that the high command had in controlling the reserved funds during the so-called Operation Kitchen , the illegal espionage of the ex-treasurer Luis Bárcenas organized, between 2013 and 2015, by the Interior in the stage of the popular Jorge Fernández Díaz and which was financed precisely with the irregular diversion of about 60,000 euros from this item.
“Would you have confidence in those people who managed the reserved funds without due control […] And with this non-control of the reserved funds, they allowed them to be used to destroy evidence so that the PP could hide its responsibilities?”, Grande-Marlaska snapped at the deputy Ana Vázquez in clear reference to Pérez de los Cobos, who, between 2011 and March 2018, he was the director of the Coordination and Studies Cabinet of the Secretary of State for Security, a position from which he endorsed the use made of this item. “This type of people is, at least, the ones that this Interior Minister does not have, he has not had and will not have confidence in,” she added.
When Grande-Marlaska took over the Interior portfolio, Pérez de los Cobos was no longer in charge of controlling this item. A few months earlier, still with Mariano Rajoy at the Moncloa Palace, he had left the post of director of the Coordination Cabinet to take charge of the Madrid Command. He held that position for a little over two years, until in May 2020 he was suddenly dismissed by the minister for “loss of confidence” after finding out from a newspaper that agents under his command were investigating the director of the Alerts and Emergencies center, Fernando Simón, inside the case 8-M for holding feminist demonstrations days before the first state of alarm for Covid-19. The dismissal document detailed that the dismissal had been agreed for “failing to report on the development of investigations and actions of the Civil Guard, within the operational framework and of the Judicial Police, for information purposes”, in reference to those investigations, which finally they were archived by the judge who was investigating the case. Since then, Pérez de los Cobos has been stationed in the Weapons and Explosives Intervention.
The recent ruling of the Supreme Court that annulled this decision obliges the minister to restore him to his position as head of the Civil Guard in Madrid and to pay him compensation for the money he has stopped receiving since his dismissal, since the remuneration as head of the command is superior to what he perceives in his current destination. However, Grande-Marlaska has insisted, since the meaning of the ruling was known, that he is going to wait for the literalness of the sentence to be known to find out what he will do. “When the resolution arrives, it will be issued, in execution of it and in accordance with what the Supreme Court declares because we still do not know the content, whatever is appropriate” he stated this Wednesday in Congress to immediately emphasize that “the lack of confidence [en el alto mando] is left over”. Sources from his department insist that once the sentence is known, it will be known if the ruling has been motivated by a question of form in the dismissal – and, therefore, rectifiable in his opinion – or substance, and in what terms.
It is not the first time that Grande-Marlaska wields the caso Kitchen to face the PP’s attacks on its management. Last Monday, during his appearance in the Interior Commission of Congress for the so-called Barracks case, in which alleged irregularities in the awarding of works in Civil Guard barracks are investigated, the minister recalled that the last director general of the Civil Guard with the PP, José Manuel Holgado, ordered the investigations to be archived in December 2017 who had initiated Internal Affairs on the existence of this plot. “You stop it and have it archived,” he stated before linking that attitude to the illegal espionage of Bárcenas and the irregular use of funds reserved for it.
“During the 2011-2018 period, the PP governments used public resources and media in an inadmissible manner, which should have been allocated to the safety of all, for partisan and spurious purposes in an unacceptable manner in a democracy,” he stressed. Grande-Marlaska also recalled that day that two of the top managers of the Interior in those years, Fernández Díaz and whoever was his number twoFrancisco Martínez, can “be sentenced to long prison terms” after the Prosecutor’s Office has requested 15 years in prison for each of them for illegal espionage on Bárcenas.
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However, until now Grande-Marlaska had not pointed to the role of Pérez de los Cobos in controlling the funds reserved in those years to explain, at least in part, his loss of confidence in him. In fact, the colonel has never been charged for these events, but he did have to testify in the National Court as a witness in November 2020. Then, the high command of the Civil Guard assured that he was never aware of Operation Kitchen or of others and that its mission was, exclusively, to authorize the deliveries of money to the different units of the National Police and the armed institute for the payment of informers and other expenses prior justification of the same, although without going into the detailed details of those games.
The colonel also affirmed that the times he dispatched with Jorge Fernández Díaz they never spoke of monitoring Bárcenas and his entourage without judicial control. Pérez de los Cobos then reduced his role to that of a “treasurer” who received a series of folders with reports on the needs for reserved funds of the different units, which he was authorizing. He simply checked that the formal requirements were met, but he did not receive information on the origin or scope of the operations, since these had been previously authorized by those responsible for the units.
Months later, in March 2021, Pérez de los Cobos testified again for the caso Kitchen, but on this occasion not in the National Court, but before the commission of investigation of the Congress for those facts. On this occasion, and when asked by the different parliamentary groups about the use and management of the nearly six million euros per year from this item, the high command of the Civil Guard hid behind the fact that the reserved funds were considered material classified as secret by law not to answer. “I can’t answer that question”, he responded almost automatically to most of the questions that were put to him.
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