Top police chiefs to meet over Catalan spying allegations

High-ranking police officials are set to meet on Monday to discuss the fallout from a Catalan spying scandal that could affect politicians, judges, prosecutors, businesspeople and celebrities.

Police director general Ignacio Cosidó, his aide Eugenio Pino and the Catalan chief of police Agustín Castro will try to come up with a strategy to deal with a case that the regional government is portraying as a conspiratorial attempt by antinationalist forces to undermine the sovereignty drive in Catalonia.

Former Catalan premier José Montilla (a Socialist), former deputy premier Josep Lluís Carod-Rovira (of the Catalan nationalist republicans ERC), the European Commissioner Joaquín Almunia and Madrid premier Ignacio González of the conservative Popular Party were just some of the subjects of investigation by the detective agency Método 3, the daily La Vanguardia has reported.

The scandal broke last week when a former policeman who worked for Método 3 gave Barcelona police copies of recordings of a lunch between the leader of the Catalan PP, Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, and María Victoria Álvarez, the former lover of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, in July 2010.

Hidden microphones captured a conversation in which Álvarez told the PP leader how she witnessed Pujol Ferrusola laundering money on behalf of his family, whose patriarch is Jordi Pujol, an influential figure in Catalan politics. Two of his sons, Jordi and Oriol, are now under investigation in corruption cases.

The recording of the conversation between Camacho and Álvarez was allegedly ordered by José Zaragoza, former organization secretary for the Catalan Socialists, Spanish daily El Mundo reported. Zaragoza, who has a seat in Congress, has denied the allegations but admitted that his party hired companies from the same group as Método 3.