Information related to Operation Catalonia, the Spanish state's dirty war on the independence movement, continues to appear. The latest installment has to do with false information released to harm Catalan pro-independence leaders. The so-called patriotic police of that operated under the former Spanish interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz paid 25,000 euros, obtained from the state's reserved funds, to a French policeman to obtain the supposed bank account number of Xavier Trias in Andorra. The account was fictitious, but the number ended up being published on the front page of the newspaper El Mundo a few days before Catalonia's first consultation on independence from Spain, the unofficial vote held on November 9th, 2014. The radio programme El món a RAC1 has informed that behind the leak of this account number is the patriotic police brigade that acted under the orders of Fernández Díaz.
This para-police body created to fight the Catalan independence movement made contact in 2014 with the customs surveillance service of France, specifically, with an important figure in the French security forces, with whom commissioner Enrique García Castaño had contact. The commissioner contacted his French friend to ask him if he had information on any bank account of any pro-independence Catalan leader abroad.
A French official with many contacts
The broadcaster reported how Castaño's French friend had access to the so-called Falciani list, containing the names of some 130,000 potential tax evaders with undeclared accounts at the Geneva (Switzerland) branch of the British bank HSBC - named for Hervé Falciani, computer scientist and ex-employee of the bank, who leaked it from his workplace. What Castaño wanted to hear from his colleague was that names of Catalan pro-independence leaders were on the list.
The work of the France friend had to be paid for, and Castaño allegedly covered the payment with money from Spain's reserved funds - according to some sources he was paid 25,000 euros in cash with permission from the top of the interior ministry. The Frenchman did his job and a few weeks later informed the patriotic police working under Fernández Díaz that he had information on an account of Xavier Trias in Andorra, with money coming from an account in Switzerland. It was a lie: Castaño did not check if the information was real but did send it to Eugenio Pino, head of the Spanish police, and José Ángel Fuentes Gago, Pino's chief of staff.
The police leaders took the information to the aforementioned Spanish newspaper, something that has been thanks to an extensive record of calls between García Castaño, Villarejo and Fuentes Gago with journalists of El Mundo who published the news.
The bank denied that the account existed
The information was published on the front page of the major Madrid newspaper on October 27th, 2014; Trias was quick to deny it and El Mundo countered by publishing the alleged account number. But with the number in hand, Xavier Trias contacted the authorities of the Swiss bank and they replied that the number did not exist. The patriotic police became nervous when they learned that the Swiss bank had denied the information and some of the senior leaders of Operation Catalonia flew to France to see the French contact who had sold them the false information. The visit was of no use to them and they were unable to recover the 25,000 euros paid for false information.