“Rafael is amoral but incapable of conceiving a plan of this kind“, Abel Matutes said yesterday, referring to the confessed perpetrator of the robbery, while charging the other suspect, police officer José Joaquín Fernández, accused only of cover-up, with being the “mastermind of the robbery” and of having a “criminal mind.” The head of the Grupo de Empresas Matutes and former Minister of Foreign Affairs made these statements during his testimony at the third session of the trial for the robbery perpetrated in 2013 at his company’s Ibiza headquarters, where 2.7 million euros were stolen, of which almost one million have not been recovered.
As Matutes explained, immediately after the robbery, when the main suspect was still denying the facts, he spoke to him to convince him to return the money in exchange for withdrawing the complaint . “You don’t fool me, it’s more than clear, don’t take me for a idiot. I’ll try to help you, but first confess and return the money, “he said. José Joaquín Fernández’s defence then took the opportunity to ask Matutes if he offered 200,000 euros to the defendants in exchange for not reporting them, to which the businessman replied that he did not remember “the detail” of what he spoke to them about.
On the difference between the amount he initially reported stolen (187,000 euros) and the amount that he finally acknowledged (2.7 million), the businessman claimed that it was a tactic to make the thieves believe that they did not know the total amount of money stolen, so that they would return it little by little and keep the unreported money.
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