The phrase from former advisor Koldo García in his final statement during the trial for the Mask case at the Supreme Court was prophetic: “This has only just begun.” On that May 6, who was the right-hand man of José Luis Ábalos, Minister of Transport until 2021, said that phrase before hearing the “ready for sentencing” that would send him back to Soto del Real prison. He remains there.
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In that intervention, Koldo García offered to help the Civil Guard’s central operative unit (UCO) understand what was happening. He was a trusted man of Santos Cerdán already in the Navarra years and went to Madrid with him in 2017. He saw what the man who would become Pedro Sánchez’s strongman in the PSOE from 2021 onwards did, as secretary of organization. García was so close to Cerdán that he even recorded him talking about the distribution of illegal commissions in exchange for rigging, with Ábalos, public works.
How much Koldo García knew is unknown. But indeed, in view of what has happened in the last month, the former advisor was not far off. The latest judicial findings would indicate that Cerdán set up his own network, supported by the power he had within the PSOE, to enrich himself. Its tentacles have been uncovered little by little.
The former PSOE secretary of organization placed members of his network in public positions
First, when Koldo García was arrested and Ábalos was charged in 2024 for taking bribes from businessman Víctor de Aldama. From that investigation, it was discovered that Cerdán was the mastermind of the group. This led a Supreme Court judge to send him to prison in 2025 for 142 days. Then, a new plot emerged, linked to the rigging of contracts of the Spanish Industrial Holdings Society (SEPI), which ended with the arrest of its former president Vicente Fernández and former PSOE member Leire Díez. As in the previous case, the initial inquiries have shifted. The judge handling that case, Santiago Pedraz, now points to him as the head of that plot.
A WhatsApp chat called Hirurok (‘The three of us’, in Basque) shared by Díez, Fernández, and businessman Antxon Alonso has brought the workings of the sewer to the surface. But the original interest of Hirurok, with all its members closely linked to Cerdán, was the alleged rigging of SEPI contracts. Companies such as Forestalia or Tubos Reunidos, rescued in 2021 with 112 million euros of public money, are implicated in the case. Up to this point, there are two common links between both plots: the modus operandi and certain people Cerdán surrounded himself with. There are parallels, such as his ability to place trusted people in positions within public bodies to operate from within. They would be his shadow people.
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In the first case, Cerdán pulled strings to place Koldo García alongside Ábalos, at that time Sánchez’s most trusted person. Once he entered Transport, it was just a matter of managing his puppets. The same happened in the second case. His people to manage were Fernández and Díez. The first entered SEPI and the second, Enusa (dependent on SEPI). Still, the case reveals that Cerdán’s plans to place members of the plot in relevant public administration positions sometimes suffered setbacks. After Fernández left SEPI in 2019 due to his indictment in a corruption case, the group tried to “regain control” of the state company, attempting to slip Díez as chief of staff to the new president, Belén Gualda. Something Gualda flatly rejected. But they placed her in Correos.
In both cases, another man of his trust appears, Antxon Alonso. He created the company Servinabar. The Civil Guard’s UCO found a document indicating that Cerdán would be the owner of half the company. This served not only to pay a salary to relatives of the socialist but also to receive contracts from, for example, the Ministry of Transport, and to collect certain invoices that appear to be false. Additionally, he made his funds available to the plot to help one of their own. When Fernández had to resign from SEPI, Alonso hired him at Servinabar.
These two plots, which also coincide in time, last until they are discovered. As in those two cases, throughout the investigation and after analyzing the documentation and seized devices – specifically, the phones of Díez and Fernández – Cerdán has been uncovered in a third plot. In this case, it is not about enrichment but protection, for them, for the PSOE, and for the Government family. The instructor of the National Court Santiago Pedraz considers the Navarrese leader of an organization that would have tried to “destroy” and “destabilize” judicial processes affecting the PSOE and the environment of the Prime Minister.
In the plumbing plot in favor of the PSOE uncovered this week, Cerdán also held the “top role” in the action unit against judges, prosecutors, and civil guards. Although coordination was placed in Leire Díez, known as the PSOE’s plumber. Judge Pedraz has evidence of 22 meetings between the two at the party headquarters, the first on April 26, 2024, during the reflection period Sánchez took. From the gathered evidence, the magistrate points out that the then number two of the PSOE would have put the party’s logistics at the disposal of the criminal structure. Payments to Díez, who has always defended that she is an investigative journalist, would have come from Ferraz’s coffers, by order of the man through whom everything passed. New material has been seized, more phones, which will lead to new chapters.
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