
Spain's current justice minister comes under pressure after conversations emerge with former jailed inspector
Several leaked audios in the past few days are revealing questionable alleged practices by a former Spanish police inspector –and are putting increasing pressure to the Spanish justice minister.
The website moncloa.com has been leaking conversations between the former police official, José Manuel Villarejo, now in jail, and the current justice minister, Dolores Delgado, when she was prosecutor some nine years ago.
In the latest of them, published on Thursday, Villarejo revealed he had created a prostitution network in order to get information from politicians and businesspeople.
Paying women to have sex with important people
The former police official explained that he had paid money to women for them to have sexual relationships with important men so that the women could tell him what the businessmen and politicians had explained to them during their meetings.
"The important thing is that they explained things to draw the attention of the women," revealed Villarejo in the leaked conversations.
The same website had leaked another excerpt of the conversation on Wednesday in which Delgado admitted that "several Spanish judges and prosecutors ended up with minors" during a trip to Cartagena de Indias, in Colombia.
"Several Spanish judges and prosecutors ended up with minors [during a trip to Colombia]"
Dolores Delgado · Spanish justice minister
She explained that she and a judge of Spain's National Court were the only women in the trip and during a dinner, they saw their fellow male colleagues.
"They quickly stood up when they saw us and they got stressed due to the fact that we had seen them."
Minister called "faggot" to colleague
In another excerpt of the chat published on Tuesday, the current minister Delgado called "faggot" the then Spanish judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska, now her colleague in the Spanish cabinet as home affairs head.
Due to the leaks, the Spanish minister Delgado is under pressure because she said she had never met Villarejo at first –but some days later admitted having met him three times.
Minister asked to step down
A number of opposition parties in the Spanish Congress have asked her to step down, including the unionist People's Party and Ciutadans, left-wing Podemos and pro-independence ERC.
"If you hold a meeting with Villarejo, you are one more colleague of him, and Villarejo has been responsible for a dirty war in the past 40 years against a lot of things and he has been in the worst messes of the Spanish democracy," said ERC MP in Madrid Gabriel Rufián.
Villarejo is thought to have investigated pro-independence leaders in order to discredit their movement.