The auditing firm that has been auditing the PSOE’s annual accounts since 2020, Ecovis Grosclaude&Partners, is breaking with Ferraz. This was revealed by the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard in a report accessed by this newspaper after requesting documentation from the responsible auditor and managing partner, Luis Grosclaude, in a police action that took place on May 27.
«The company states that it will not carry out the audit corresponding to the year 2025 for the organization», according to the agents. Official PSOE sources do not deny the breakup to EL MUNDO, but decline to comment on the reasons. «Who audits the PSOE’s accounts is a decision that concerns the PSOE», they merely point out.
Grosclaude, managing partner of that private auditing firm, had long been expressing doubts about continuing this work with the party, which he started in 2020, due to the risks involved, although he had not confirmed his decision to resign to this newspaper until now.
His departure is a new reputational complication for the PSOE. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and Ferraz leaders have been arguing in the last year that their accounts show no irregularities, having been validated by both the Court of Accounts and Grosclaude, but both he, who presented reports with reservations, and the state auditing body have made it clear that they have never had the capacity to detect if there is a slush fund.
What this private auditor did do, according to the UCO, is audit specific invoices suspected of fraud. These are the ones authorized by the party’s current manager, the investigated Ana María Fuentes, to lawyer Jacobo Teijelo and which, according to investigating judge Santiago Pedraz, are «deceitful» and conceal payments to the socialist plot responsible for destabilizing judicial investigations against the interests of the President of the Government and the party.
The UCO indicates that the PSOE paid Teijelo – see attached reproduction – 125,000 euros for services not detailed and which were not actually for him. «Jacobo Teijelo actively participated within the organization and within the framework of this investigated activity, the PSOE made payments to him for an amount totaling at least €125,000 (VAT not included), through deceitful processing and invoicing. The processing of these payments was carried out through Leire, with the participation and connivance of Santos Cerdán. Likewise, evidence has been obtained from which it is inferred that at least part of these funds would have been destined for a third party».
The UCO report states that the agents asked Grosclaude for «documentation provided by lawyer Jacobo Teijelo regarding the audit of the PSOE’s annual accounts as of 31.12.2024. In said request [from Grosclaude in his audit work], the lawyer was asked, by means of a letter dated 07.04.2025, to provide directly to the auditing firm, by sending it to the email address psoe@qrosclaude.es, the information related to the services rendered by the lawyer to the political party throughout 2024 and up to the response date of the aforementioned request».
The auditor was therefore interested in what kind of services Teijelo had provided to Ferraz to collect those figures, although later, if he saw irregularities in this payment, he did not mention it.
That day, the UCO also requested from Grosclaude the «immediate delivery» of «all communications maintained through the aforementioned email account (psoe@grosclaude.es) related to this specific matter».
However, the auditor does not retain all of them. He handed over a limited computer folder with «the annual backup copy made by the audit team members, due to the fact that the psoe@grosclaude.es inbox, like those of the other clients they work with, has a maximum capacity, so all communications from each year are downloaded annually». Nevertheless, he provided his emails with the PSOE from previous years, according to the report drawn up by the agents.
Ecovis Grosclaude&Partners is an auditing and consulting firm much smaller than the so-called big four (PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY) and, unlike them, it does accept working with political parties. It was hired in 2020 by the previous manager, Mariano Moreno, and was presented as a sign that the PSOE subjected itself to more external controls than the PP to guarantee the solvency of its annual accounts, which are also audited by the Court of Accounts.
Moreno’s successor in 2021, Ana María Fuentes, kept Grosclaude since then, but official party sources decline to reveal if there is another private auditor who will take charge of the 2025 accounts that must be closed this very month.
Fuentes is in the delicate legal situation of being under investigation. According to the same UCO report, Ana María Fuentes was interrogated by the Civil Guard on May 27 for the crimes of «criminal organization and document forgery» as she was attributed with the approval of the aforementioned false invoices in favor of the plot organized by Cerdán, who was the one who proposed her for the party’s management.
This Andalusian socialist refused to testify, according to the judicial police report, and has remained in office since then, despite the departure in 2025 of her patron Cerdán and Sánchez’s insistence last Wednesday in Barcelona that he acts «forcefully» against any hint of irregularities in his organization.
As this newspaper published last Sunday, Ana María Fuentes, in her five years as manager, has broken all spending records in the so-called «external services», which is the payment to suppliers that allows disbursements to third parties like those investigated by the judge. She manages about 40 million euros annually for this item and has allocated more than 56 million in the 2023 fiscal year, a historical record. 70% of the resources managed by the PSOE’s manager come from public subsidies.
During her tenure, the use of cash in Ferraz has also doubled compared to years prior to Covid.