The river had been sounding for some time. The name of the “plumber” Leire Díez had started to rumble. The PSOE reduced her to a mere party member. They expelled her and, with that, thought that once the dog was dead, the rage was over. The majority was denied; no one knew who this woman was who had held various positions of responsibility in public companies. The imprisonment of the then party organization secretary, Santos Cerdán, in June 2025 made the river sound louder, but the arrest of Díez in December – ordered by the National Court judge Santiago Pedraz – only made things worse for the party led by Pedro Sánchez for one simple reason: from that very moment the UCO had her phone. Five months later, suspicions have come to light. Pedraz has uncovered a plot, led by Cerdán, whose objective was to destabilize judicial processes affecting the PSOE, the Government, or the president’s family. And all their activities would have been paid with false invoices by Ferraz – the party’s headquarters –.
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Once the magistrate had identified all its members and established their role in the organization, he took the next step. Yesterday he ordered the Civil Guard’s central operative unit (UCO) to appear at the PSOE headquarters to seize documentation, emails, accounting books, and visitor logs, as well as to formally notify the party manager, Ana María Fuentes, of the investigation. Simultaneously, other agents went to the homes of the newly investigated: Cerdán, the former Andalusian councilor Gaspar Zarrías, and businessman Javier Pérez Dolset. There is another member of this organization, the former president of SEPI Vicente Fernández, who was already arrested in December along with Díez, so his search was no longer necessary. According to sources from the investigation, the agents spent twelve hours at Ferraz.
The instructor places Begoña Gómez’s indictment at the starting point of the plot’s actions
They are all united by a common goal: to sabotage judicial processes and, for that, to go personally and professionally against prosecutors, mainly from the Anti-Corruption unit, judges, specifically Juan Carlos Peinado – who is investigating Begoña Gómez, Sánchez’s wife – and Beatriz Biedma – who has brought David Sánchez, the president’s brother, to trial. There was another target, Antonio Balas, head of the UCO, the Civil Guard unit tasked with investigating cases against Ábalos, Sánchez’s family, and the attorney general, Álvaro García.
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These moves had been denounced by two prosecutors, José Grinda and Ignacio Stampa, and were being investigated by a judge in Madrid. But Pedraz has found the “deceptive” payments that would have been made from the party’s management to Díez and to a journalist who worked for them – now deceased – Patricia López. Additionally, there is evidence that the party paid for the trips made by the plot members for meetings both at Ferraz and with people who could help them in their objectives.
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At the same time as entering the PSOE headquarters, information was gathered at the homes of other indicted individuals
Despite all the orchestrated machinery to “destabilize” judicial cases, their objectives have not had the expected result: today the trial of David Sánchez begins at the Provincial Court of Badajoz; Begoña Gómez has the preliminary hearing on June 9 as a step prior to the trial; Ábalos is in prison, awaiting sentencing; the former attorney general is already convicted, and Cerdán remains under investigation after his time in prison.
Pedraz places the day of Begoña Gómez’s indictment and the publication of a letter to the citizens from Sánchez, where he announced a five-day reflection period, as the starting point of the plot. That same day, April 24, 2024, Cerdán asked Díez – with whom he allegedly had set up another corruption network within the public administration – to come to Madrid to help Sánchez. Always according to the judge, Díez mobilized. For this, she would have the help of Pérez Dolset, who had already been gathering information for years against the prosecutor who had ordered his arrest, José Grinda. The idea was to dig up dirt on him, falsely accuse him, and then offer 300,000 euros in exchange for dropping some cases – including Dolset’s – and providing information about his boss, the chief Anti-Corruption prosecutor Alejandro Luzón. It would be a two-in-one, crossed interests. What they sought, according to Pedraz, was to “systematically and continuously destabilize any judicial procedure.”
Pedraz considers Cerdán the leader of the network and the Andalusian Gaspar Zarrías as the payer
But that would not come cheap for the PSOE, according to the investigation. The plot would use the former Andalusian councilor Gaspar Zarrías to pay Díez through his company, and the lawyers Jacobo Teijelo and Ismael Oliver. The party manager, according to the order, would have prepared “deceptive invoices” to pay the two lawyers or Zarrías money that would then end up entirely in the “plumber’s” accounts. For now, all deny the allegations.
