Método 3 allegedly involved in espionage cases in Spain - UPDATE Francisco Marco arrested

The private detective company Método 3 prepared hundreds of reports with "sensitive content", according to sources of the current investigation, adding that the work of this agency includes political parties such as PP, CiU and PSC and other sectors including the judiciary and sports, particularly football.

The investigators surveyed more than 20,000 files made by Metodo 3, but did not specify the amount of information under investigation by National Police.

This Thursday the Interior Minister, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, said in the House of Representatives that there are "lots of information" about the alleged eavesdropping in Catalonia, and that the matter will be investigated "very thoroughly."

Investigators also have knowledge of the existence of work done by Metodo 3 in the market and that they are being sold, and they warn that reports are not only on political activities but also on personal aspects.

Other sources have added that one of the objectives of the investigations is to determine whether the recordings of conversations carried out by Metodo 3 were random, subsequently looking for persons possibly interested in buying that information, if it was to order, or a mixture of both.

Because of the amount and nature of information available in the reports, the Police Headquarters of Catalunya has created a special team to investigate possible cases of political espionage, taking reinforcements from the central offices in Madrid, according to 'La Vanguardia' (Catalan newspaper).

Metodo 3 launched a voluntary dissolution process last November. On their website, in which they define themselves as "the number one detectives agency in the country", they say they can defend their reports "to whom necessary, with all the necessary evidence."

After 27 years of existence, Marita Fernandez Lado presented on November 12, 2012 the voluntary dissolution of the company he had founded in 1985 in Barcelona. This appears in the Registery of Barcelona on the 23rd of that month. The company initiated the process to terminate its contracts even though it yielded profits in all fiscal years.

The last fiscal year for which accounts are presented in the Commercial Register, 2009, does not reflect a state of bankruptcy, but since then three years have gone by. In that year assets amounted to 1.56 million, with a net worth of 399,574 euros and a long-term debt with banks of 406,255 euros.


Original source: El Mundo

Hi Ribisl, is it possible to put a link up for that article.

It is Metodo3 they are talking about I presume....So if I am reading it right, the company was dissolved in November last year?? Interesting

candyfloss wrote:Hi Ribisl, is it possible to put a link up for that article.

It is Metodo3 they are talking about I presume....So if I am reading it right, the company was dissolved in November last year?? Interesting

I wonder if any of the staff kept their personal cuddlecat - Kate donated about 20 I believe to 'motivate' them. Apparently she advocated squeezing or shaking them. Conjures up a rather surreal picture.

It's not that long ago they had a lovely, shiny new website.

@Candyfloss
No problem. I didn't put the link because my post was based on a rough translation I did of the original article, which I then modified a bit so it would make more sense to the forum members.

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/02/15/barcelona/1360954974.html

P.S. Sorry 'method' was my typo.

Ribisl wrote:@Candyfloss
No problem. I didn't put the link because my post was based on a rough translation I did of the original article, which I then modified a bit so it would make more sense to the forum members.

[url=http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/02/15/barcelona/1360954974.html

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/02/15/barcelona/1360954974.html[/quote[/url]]

Thanks Ribisl. Should we change the thread title to Metodo3??

tigger wrote:

candyfloss wrote:Hi Ribisl, is it possible to put a link up for that article.

It is Metodo3 they are talking about I presume....So if I am reading it right, the company was dissolved in November last year?? Interesting

I wonder if any of the staff kept their personal cuddlecat - Kate donated about 20 I believe to 'motivate' them. Apparently she advocated squeezing or shaking them. Conjures up a rather surreal picture.

It's not that long ago they had a lovely, shiny new website.

Didn't they move into lovely shiny new premises as well?

So if their main activity is spying they may also be into hacking, which begs the question who were their paid targets?

aiyoyo wrote:So if their main activity is spying they may also be into hacking, which begs the question who were their paid targets?

Assisting the McCanns as BK said...what better way to help them,than find out how the investigation was going that had stalled because there was not ENOUGH evidence...december 2011 SY visited metodo 3 offices in Barcelona taking 4 boxes of documents,reported by met3 to hold 8 new leads...work that out
The real search for a living Madeliene stopped the day Eddie flew off his lead into 5A...the pr went into overdrive since

Is not private investigation illegal in Portugal? If so, hunt down and prosecute M3.

Just tweeted........



Arrested, the head of the detective agency Method 3, Francisco Marco ! #McCann #scam Private Detective.



Those arrested (4) #FranciscoHoracioMarco, owner of #Method3 pic.twitter.com/9VR6S2od

Police search headquarters Method 3 detective agency



JO | Barcelona

Updated Tuesday 2/19/2013 10:02 hours




National Police agents are recording Tuesday offices Method 3 detective agency after last night arrested its director, Francisco Marco, and three of his former investigators accused of revealing secrets.

The agency office located at 520 Diagonal Avenue, has lived throughout the morning a bustle of onlookers and journalists, who have been able to observe how police officers in plain clothes entered the same in search of documentation.

Agents also have moved to the former offices of the company, at 124 Aribau and located immediately opposite the already well-known restaurant La Camargue, the origin of the current crisis of espionage.

In that same room is suspected in 2010 recorded a conversation between the leader of the Catalan PP, Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, and the former partner of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, Victoria Alvarez, in which this would have revealed alleged laundering by the eldest son of the former president of the Generalitat.

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/02/19/barcelona/1361264501.html

Police arrest four people for political espionage in Catalonia

Updated Tuesday 2/19/2013 5:59 hours

The National Police have arrested in the last hours in Barcelona four people allegedly involved in the case of political espionage in Catalonia . This is the general manager of the detective agency of Method 3, Francisco Marco , the former workers Borreguero Alexander and Julian Peribáñez and chief operating officer of Method 3, Elisenda Villena , all accused of revealing secrets.

Detainees should be transferred to the Commissioner of the National Police in Barcelona's La Verneda , where the group operates technological crimes of Police, who is handling the case.

Also awaits you in the next few hours can be a judicial authorization to record Method 3 headquarters in Barcelona.

The arrests have occurred the same day that the police leadership , with the director general of police, Cosidó Ignacio, head had met in Madrid to discuss how to tackle urgently a crisis that has splashed at least , PP, CiU and PSC.

Following the latest revelations, the general secretary of CiU, Josep Antoni Duran Lleida, has requested the director of the National Intelligence Center, Felix Sanz, before the commission of the Congress for secret expenses explain if "dirty war" and is spying on the Catalan parties.

For his part, Secretary of the PSC Political Action, Antoni Balmón, announced that his party would not take legal action until they prove the information published so far and to link with the detective agency that was responsible for tracks.

The four arrested were directly involved in the case that uncovered the alleged plot, the recording of a meeting between the leader of the Catalan PP, Alicia Sánchez-Camacho , and Victoria Alvarez, former partner of the eldest son of former President of the Generalitat Jordi Pujol.

As reported by this medium over the last few days, and Julian Alexander Borreguero Peribáñez have been responsible materials microphone recording during a meeting in the restaurant 'La Camargue' of Barcelona



http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2013/02/18/barcelona/1361218535.html

so Metodo 3 were involved in money laundering and spying.
Now what can you do with information gathered from spying, blackmail people perhaps, for money that can then be re-laundered?
Now why would Brian Kennedy, local to PdL, employ Metodo 3 for the McCanns to find their missing child.
Somewhere in store, is a reference to MW club being a good holiday place for adults. The website has since been changed but had previously had the word 'boys'. Then the next year 'girls', but that is not there now.
What does any of the above have to do with trying to find Madeleine?

Seems Metodo3 bugged a vase of flowers and heard the leader of a political party discussing money laundering with a friend. Now the leader of that party has petitioned (and been accepted by a Judge) to get Metodo`s recordings of the conversation prohibited and also petitioned (and had accepted) for a list of all Metodo`s clients so they can see who ordered the spying.

http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/02/18/inenglish/1361215624_416989.html

what if they bugged clients places and phones too!!.. eek!!! you know, and then used recordings to leverage some nice cash in hand non-existent investigative work

PeterMac wrote:

bobbin wrote:so Metodo 3 were involved in money laundering and spying.
Now what can you do with information gathered from spying, blackmail people perhaps, for money that can then be re-laundered?
Now why would Brian Kennedy, local to PdL, employ Metodo 3 for the McCanns to find their missing child. [...]

How would he even KNOW about M3 ?

***
Rhetorical question, PM?

Metodo 3 are trending WORLDWIDE on Twitter

Is the story that big?

ShuBob wrote:Metodo 3 are trending WORLDWIDE on Twitter

Is the story that big?

OMG, so they are, why would a relatively unknown Spanish Detective Agency warrent so much interest??

Exactly candyfloss, it's not who they are but who they are linked with in my very humble opinion

http://ansamed.ansa.it/ansamed/en/news/nations/spain/2013/02/19/Spain-four-arrests-Catalonia-spying-case_8273525.html

ANSAmed) - MADRID, 19 FEB - Four people from the 'Metodo 3' agency, including the owner, Francisco Marco, the director and two employees were arrested Monday night as an investigation into the Catalonia bugging scandal picks up pace.

Two of the arrested have admitted illegally taping conversations of members of Catalonia's Partito Popolare.

Partido Populare President, Alicia Sanchez Camacho, last week filed a complaint with police after claiming that a dinner in a Barcelona restaurant on July 7 2010 between herself and Victoria Alvarez, the ex girlfriend of Jordi Pujol junior, the son of former Catalan premier Jordi Pujol, was bugged.

In the illegally obtained recordings Alvarez was heard telling Camacho about alleged money laundering: 500 euro bank notes were stuffed in a suitcase bound for Andorra and her then boyfriend made threats not to reveal details of his family's money laundering activities. Sanchez Camacho alleges that the spying is politically motivated, given that the sister of Metodo 3 director Elisenda Villena, 'Ana' is head of justice in the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC).

Camacho hit back at criticism for not going to the police about Alvarez, by calling her story ''incomplete and inconclusive''. (ANSAmed).

Fancy that, two out of three of PIs that they employed were criminals. I hope Edgars powder is dry!

Have merged your thread here maebee as already posted here and thread title updated earlier.

Could metodo3 have really been working for kennedy and the mccanns just a cover

apologies if this has been posted before, but found this report from the London Evening Standard, 24 November 2007

''..



24 November 2007










































The private detectives hunting for Madeleine McCann were once arrested
in a phone-tapping scandal linked to leading politicians and
businessmen.



















Five senior members of the family-run firm Metodo 3 – including
director-general Francisco Marco, who is liaising with Kate and Gerry
McCann – were held amid claims of industrial and political espionage...

Mr Marco's mother, Maria Fernandez Lado, 57, who founded the agency
23 years ago, was pictured in handcuffs after being arrested as she
handed a client a cassette allegedly containing a phone-tapped
conversation.


'Murky past':The firm's founder Martina Lado


In a raid on Metodo 3's Barcelona offices, police seized handguns,
ammunition, listening equipment, cassettes and transcripts of taped
phone calls. But the 1995 case was dropped by a judge after defence
lawyers levelled accusations of police entrapment.

However, The Mail on Sunday's findings – including transcripts of
conversations in which Mr Marco's mother allegedly offers a tapping
service – will bring into question the suitability of the firm in
running the McCanns' investigation...''


Here is the link
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/madeleine-pictured-in-handcuffs-the-mccann-detective-once-held-over-phone-tapping-6674771.html

From Joana

McCanns former detectives, Método 3, arrested for illegal spying



http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2013/02/mccanns-former-detectives-metodo-3.html

mmm it would be good if they started singing like a canary in what they do know -- now theres a thought

Mccanns paid CROOKS in the search for their missing child

Now that woukd make a nice SUN headline

Addendum

Crooks say they never were paid as much as the mccanns said they paid them LOL

Inspectorfrost wrote:Mccanns paid CROOKS in the search for their missing child

Now that woukd make a nice SUN headline

Addendum

Crooks say they never were paid as much as the mccanns said they paid them LOL

Maybe they were! Not to find Maddie but to spy on the PJ.

The $100million remains - why did the PJ officer agree to meet with BK accompanied by one of the M3 detectives?

For one thing parallel PI investigation is illegal in Portugal, and for another thing BK has no business nosing into the investigation.

aiyoyo wrote:

Inspectorfrost wrote:Mccanns paid CROOKS in the search for their missing child

Now that woukd make a nice SUN headline

Addendum

Crooks say they never were paid as much as the mccanns said they paid them LOL

Maybe they were! Not to find Maddie but to spy on the PJ.

The $100million remains - why did the PJ officer agree to meet with BK accompanied by one of the M3 detectives?

For one thing parallel PI investigation is illegal in Portugal, and for another thing BK has no business nosing into the investigation.

?????