The director of the Civil Guard, Mercedes González, denied this Friday before the judge having pressured the members of the UCO as part of the plan of the informant Leire Díez to deactivate the investigations that harmed the PSOE and the Government.
“I am a victim of Cerdán,” González stated in reference to the former PSOE Organization Secretary. According to the investigations of the Cloacas case, it was Santos Cerdán who put the PSOE infrastructure at the service of Leire Díaz.
Before the magistrate of the National Court Santiago Pedraz, the investigated party assured that if she had known that Díez was an envoy of Cerdán she would not have met with her. Meetings that she did not qualify as such, but as encounters, because they took place outside the Civil Guard leadership and outside the official agenda.
González continues to deny a third meeting with the informant recorded in the Civil Guard reports, supported by a fine that Díez received near the Armed Institute’s headquarters during Christmas 2024. She declared that, after checking her agenda, she still does not remember it.
She did address the two meetings she acknowledges with the informant, in line with what she declared in the Senate. After phone contacts when Díez was at Correos and she was the Government delegate in Madrid, they had a first face-to-face meeting in October 2024. They talked about both of their work.
In April of the following year, they met again in a café near González’s office. There the informant did probe about the possibility of rehabilitating the civil guard Rubén Villalba, investigated in the Koldo case and whom Díez wanted to use in her undermining of the UCO’s activities. González declared that, besides telling her that this was not possible, she asked for “the bill” and ended the meeting.
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She also explained that the 13-second call to Díez that was detected she believes was due to a dialing error on her part. Regarding deleting messages with the informant, she stated that she has 80 contacts whose Whatsapp messages are automatically deleted after 24 hours and that this is the reason, not a deliberate act to erase traces with the informant.
González agreed to answer the questions of the Anti-Corruption prosecutors and the popular accusation, as well as her defense. She was asked about the order from the deputy operational director (DAO) – who testified yesterday – to the UCO to “keep a low profile” in investigations such as that of the brother of the Prime Minister. “I do not know that order.”
The prosecutors’ interrogation addressed the three reserved reports opened to the UCO for alleged leaks. The investigators believe they were a tool to pressure the agents and dissuade them from working with special zeal.
Regarding the first of them, she recalled that the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, tried to call her, but she was on the AVE and they could not contact. The minister ended up calling the DAO and the investigation was opened. She considered it justified because a tutorial on handling email files directed to the judge of the hermanísimo case eventually reached the parties, which allowed knowing the email of Begoña Gómez from another relative of Pedro Sánchez and a minor niece.
She also confirmed that, when the informant’s maneuvers came to light, she informed the UCO of her contacts with her. This has been denied before the judge by the unit’s commanders.
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