The president of Iberdrola, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, has discharged this morning all responsibility for the hiring of commissioner Villarejo by the company for 13 years in which he was its security chief, Antonio Asenjo, to whom he has granted “total autonomy” . “I did not order, nor did I authorize, nor did I know anything about this man”, said the head of the electricity company in reference to Villarejo, as reported to elDiario.es sources present in the statement.
Sánchez Galán has defended that Asenjo had “total autonomy” and that, in any case, his functions did not depend on him nor did they dispatch matters together. The president of Iberdrola has declared as an investigator for the crimes of active bribery, against privacy and false documents in relation to the commissions of the company to commissioner Villarejo between 2004 and 2017, when he was an official assigned to the security center of the State. A total of 17 contracts worth 1,123,000 euros have appeared.
The one who was Iberdrola’s security chief until December 2019, Antonio Asenjo, assumed responsibility before the judge for having hired Commissioner Villarejo’s company, although he denied that it constituted any illegality. Asenjo declared that some of the reports prepared by the police in prison reached Ignacio Sánchez Galán, but that he was unaware that Cenyt belonged to Villarejo,
Before the statement, the company made public a statement referring to the summons as under investigation of its president in the following way: “Ignacio Sánchez Galán has finally managed to be received by Judge Manuel García-Castellón, after requesting it for months and in order to be able to defend himself against the slander of which he is accused and denounce that Iberdrola was spied on by a third person whose intentions are to take over the company owned by its almost four hundred thousand shareholders”.
In court, Sánchez Galán has reiterated that role of victim and has asked Judge García Castellón to investigate the alleged espionage to which Commissioner Villarejo subjected him. The defendant has begun by responding to the judge that he “never” dealt with the policeman, whom he did not meet until he saw on television. He has declared something similar about the police company, Cenyt, through which the police invoiced Iberdrola, and whose receipts are included in the case. Or Casesa, another firm that, according to prosecutors, Villarejo and Iberdrola used so that no trace of the commissioner would be left. “At Iberdrola we have 19,000 suppliers that employ 400,000 people,” said Sánchez Galán.
The interrogation began with such good manners that Judge García Castellón warned the accused that he did not intend to “go catch him in anything”, but then the tone hardened, especially in the answers that the president of Iberdrola offered to the prosecutor Miguel Serrano . “I never ordered Mr. Villarejo to be hired. I have said it 17 times,” said Sánchez Galán, raising his tone to the prosecutor, according to the sources consulted.
García Castellón has read to Sánchez Galán some fragments of the transcripts of conversations between Villarejo and Asenjo. Iberdrola’s head of security once told the police officer that “when are you going to give him more” because the reports he makes are “like a drug” for his boss. The chairman of Iberdrola has refused to comment on conversations in which he has said, he did not intervene, and has added that he found the terminology used by the interlocutors “funny”.
Part of the accusation against Sánchez Galán is based on the testimony of a former director of the company, Antonio del Olmo, who was director of Control of Corporate Functions. Del Olmo put in writing in 2004 that there were irregularities in the invoices to Villarejo, as well as that the director of security, Asenjo, had told him that Sánchez Galán had ordered special surveillance work that had already been started by the Casesa company, the alleged cover of the commissioner.
Before the judge, Sánchez Galán has blamed Del Olmo himself, who has also been charged like Asenjo. Sánchez Galán has declared that if Antonio del Olmo had not signed those invoices they would never have been paid and has shown that his complaint before a notary public, also included in the case, has taken place fourteen years after leaving the company. In this regard, Iberdrola has said in its statement: “José Antonio del Olmo presented evidence that has been proven to be false and is convicted. Counterfeiting and theft for which he has been convicted.
Before Sánchez Galán, Fernando Bécker declared, who admitted before the judge in the Villarejo case that he validated the invoices from the electricity company to the commissioner’s companies, but without knowing who he was or what those orders were really about. The former president of Iberdrola Spain has acknowledged his signature in an email, while at the same time he has downplayed that visa of payments to Villarejo as they are minor issues for a company of its size.
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