To understand the intricate but ultimately basic system of collecting alleged illegal commissions by Santos Cerdán and his circle, it may suffice, by way of example, to follow the path of the Toyota RAV 4 with license plate ending in JYW that the politician used through a leasing agreement between 2017 and 2019, with a fee of 567 euros, and which is driven according to the Guardia Civil, through an accounting gorge, several messages and cash movements to Acciona, the main payer of commissions in the case, of course with Servinabar, the company that according to the former number 2 of the PSOE had nothing to do with him, as a channel and link.
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Cerdán and his wife, Paqui Muñoz, opened an account in 2017 at a BBVA in Donetzebe (Navarra) for the leasing, and the employee began to speak directly with Koldo García, the usual mailman of the scheme, the man who got his hands dirty. Right from the start, the BBVA employee tells Koldo, when the leasing is set up, that there is an overdraft of 360 euros. It is covered, through a deposit at an ATM, by Patricia Uriz, Koldo’s wife. The Guardia Civil locates a prior transfer from Servinabar, which at that time “only receives funds from Acciona and Geoalcali”. No “refund” from Cerdán to Uriz is found, say the agents.
Shortly after, there is another discrepancy of 20 euros, which Uriz also covers. Payments of another two installments of 600 euros each for the leasing are then recorded, paid in cash, without the agents being able to determine who pays.
The agents dig a little deeper afterwards to uncover how Cerdán spent money that theoretically was not his, and which would logically come from commissions, in this case from Acciona. On September 27, Koldo and Uriz travel to Milagro, Cerdán’s town, to see him. The next day, “without any context,” the UCO emphasizes, Koldo informs Patricia that “Fernando has the money, in Bilbao.” “Fernando” is Fernando Morales, the Acciona executive already charged in the procedure underway in the National Court. Koldo also says something else, with his peculiar spelling: “He’ll give it to me as soon as I go [sic]”.
In case there was any doubt about who Fernando is, the agents read in Koldo’s agenda, that September 28: “Be with Fernando Acciona” – the use of the verb is again very Koldo -. On August 30, García informs his then wife (they are now separated) that he would give her “Santi’s stuff,” referring to Cerdán.
Patricia Uriz replies that she is “in Mendillorri,” a neighborhood of Pamplona not far from Erripagaña, where Servinabar obtained the award of a couple of public social housing developments. The next day, from an ATM in Mendillorri, 600 euros are deposited into the BBVA account opened in Donetzebe by Santos Cerdán and his wife, Francisca Muñoz, covering the leasing fee charged a few days later, on September 4 of that same 2017.
The agents, moreover, cannot trace the origin of the money that Uriz and Koldo move to pay for the car for Santos and his wife. Their conclusion is clear: it is a payment from Acciona through its executive Fernando Merino, in exchange for the public contracts obtained together with Servinabar.
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