The Internal Affairs Unit of the National Police, which investigates the activities of commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, rules out that he and his collaborators had the Pegasus spy program or any similar technology, since dozens of gigabytes of documentation and audio analyzed in the context of the cause that is followed in the National High Court have not found a single evidence of it.
This is stated in a report addressed to Judge Manuel García Castellón based on the request made by the former president of Sacyr, Luis del Rivero. Victim of the commissioner twice, since he was the center of attention in a project for Caixabank and Repsol and in another for BBVA, he took his phones to analyze and concluded that between 2006 and 2010 he had been the object of “an espionage system” that It allowed “total control” of the terminals and the “massive erasure” of information.
For the businessman, it was white and bottled.
However, and apart from the fact that Internal Affairs recognizes that it does not have “the training and the necessary tools to rule on the issues” related to the infection of the phones, the report to which ABC had access stops to analyze the evidence collected in the case about Villarejo’s modus operandi and the alleged criminal activity that he carried out from his companies. And he says that this technological line did not cross it.
«From the objective data collected throughout the procedure, no evidence has been obtained that Grupo Cenyt (nor, therefore, Villarejo) has technological tools with the capabilities described, nor qualified personnel for it, nor is it capacities that it has offered to its clients in the different Projects investigated (having resorted to third parties, as in the case of the Iron Project), the researchers recall.
In that particular case, which is being judged these days in the National High Court, Villarejo needed others to be able to perpetrate a computer attack on the database of a law firm specializing in patents. There is no evidence that he executed it, nor that while he planned to do it with his clients, he offered them the possibility of accessing it with Pegasus or similar technologies, which are just as invasive but leave no trace.
The analysis of the Police also adds that “there is also no evidence that through the then Head of the Central Unit of Operational Support (UCAO)”, Commissioner Enrique García Castaño, who was the one who handled a good part of the technology available to the Police Station General Information of the Police at that time, “he has been offered such a possibility.”
Internal Affairs says so in the context of piece 21, which analyzes Del Rivero’s espionage on behalf of Repsol and Caixabank in which, according to the businessman, they could have accessed his mobile phone with invasive technology. The expert that he provided to the court gave two examples: a recording of almost half an hour of a Mass and another of a minute and a half in which only snoring is heard, which, in the expert’s opinion, indicated “an error by the spy on duty that night » because «Del Rivero is not likely to trigger the recording in his sleep». They had taken over the mike of his phone without him knowing it.
But the Police say not only that the Villarejo clan did not handle this type of advanced technology, but that in this separate piece it could not be because the dates indicated by Del Rivero do not add up. The ‘Wine’ project that put him in the spotlight started in October 2011 and the infection of the phones would have occurred, according to the expert, just in the previous months, although the effects would have lasted beyond.
The report refers exclusively to technologies such as those described by the employer, which allow remote control of the mobile phone: activate the camera and microphone, as well as any application that is installed and, of course, steal information. This is what is presumed to have happened with the President of the Government and at least three of his ministers on behalf of a hitherto unknown author and using the Israeli Pegasus program.
However, some less advanced device could have had, in light of the audios and annotations of Commissioner Villarejo reviewed by ABC. One of the first references that appeared in the National High Court was in a 2004 tape in which Villarejo and García Castaño discussed the possibility of “sleeping” in the Police a system they referred to as “the backpack”, of American origin and that allowed to identify mobile phone numbers in a nearby radius.
According to the police sources consulted by ABC, it would be a system that the State Security Forces and Bodies have and that allows them to practice what they call “tasting” in the jargon. All mobile phones found in one area are identified and cross-referenced with those found in another to locate the one the person under investigation is carrying. This is how you find out which line you have to ask the judge to intervene. It would not allow listening or recording conversations, only mapping the lines.
However, later in time and in this and another case more controversial references appear, there is talk of an “Israeli suitcase”. The main indication that they bought something was provided by the former head of Internal Affairs, Marcelino Martín Blas, in a complaint that he filed with the Investigating Court number 2 of Madrid, indicating that some type of tool or spyware had been acquired opaque from reserved funds.
He presented, among other documents, a letter of invitation sent by the then Deputy Director of Operations of the Police, Eugenio Pino, to the technology company Rayzone to request a demonstration of its “passive” GSM communications control system about which, according to the letter They had been talking for a long time. If it is passive technology, says an expert consulted by ABC, it does not access the telephone as Pegasus does and if it is GSM, it only collects what is transmitted over the telephone line, not over the data network.
He also provided some emails that revealed the details of the payment and the plan: the “suitcase” would be transferred to Barcelona as it landed in Spain and due to the dates, other knowledgeable sources presume that they were going to use it in the deployment of the so-called Operation Catalonia. The thing is that software like Pegasus doesn’t need proximity, a phone in Madrid can be infected from anywhere else in the world.
However, the technology that at the beginning of the 2000s allowed telephone mapping has extensions that make it possible to listen to and record conversations that take place over the mobile line. Of course, you have to be close to the individual. For this reason, the sources consulted hypothesize that they bought an audio module, an extension of the “suitcase” that they spoke of at the beginning. But it’s just a theory. In the entire case at the National High Court, dozens of audios of Villarejo have surfaced, but he appears in all of them. They are not punctures. What there is, and a lot, are lists of phone numbers.
The Police and the Civil Guard, in any case, do not use that system, explain other State Security sources, because it is only focused on crime: If in an investigation a telephone has to be tapped, a judge decides it and it is executed with systems already implemented such as SITEL. Listening to a conversation by bringing a device closer to the one holding it is not an option.
What does seem at least circumstantially accredited is that Martín Blas suffered espionage with remote control technology and on behalf of Villarejo. At the return of summer, the controversial commissioner, her wife and a journalist who worked for her will sit on the bench for recording him in a meeting with several members of the CNI.
According to the investigations, the call application of Martín Blas’s mobile would have been remotely activated, who involuntarily contacted a third party. The line was left open capturing the entire conversation.
There are still applications on the internet that allow it. They were born as security tools so that the user could control functions such as turning on, turning off, deleting or calling their mobile while keeping it far away, as in the event of loss or theft. They are more rudimentary systems and require that the terminal you are going to enter first activate certain permissions. But once that door is cleared, they can fulfill that function, according to the sources consulted by ABC. Of course, you have to remove the trace.
