The first judge who opened an investigation in Madrid for the Leire case, Arturo Zamarriego, has raised the existence of an “important criminal network”, in which politicians, socialist militants, lawyers, and businessmen would have participated.
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This is stated in the inhibition order, accessed by EL MUNDO, in which the magistrate details the reasons why he agreed to leave his investigation in the hands of the National Court judge Santiago Pedraz, after the latter warned him that if, before the first week of September, he did not inhibit himself, he would raise a jurisdictional issue before the Supreme Court.
Initially, within the investigation, Pedraz charged Santos Cerdán, who “would have agreed to remunerate Leire Díez for her services with party funds”; the PSOE manager Ana María Fuentes, the former Andalusian vice president Gaspar Zarrías, and the lawyers Jacobo Teijelo and Ismael Oliver.
As the investigation progressed, the instructor summoned, among others, the director general of the Civil Guard, Mercedes González, her predecessor in office, Leonardo Marcos, and Juan Manuel Serrano, former president of Correos and former chief of staff to the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez.
For his part, Judge Zamarriego, holder of the instruction court number 9 of Madrid, charged Leire Díez, businessman Javier Pérez Dolset, and journalist Pere Rusiñol with alleged crimes of bribery and influence peddling.
He attributed to these three the belonging to a “coordinated” network to “gather compromising or irregular information from officers of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office“. But now, Zamarriego explains that “they might not occupy a principal place in said network,” and emphasizes that the National Court investigation “is directed against other people who could have a higher hierarchical level in said network”.
“Destabilizing” the processes against the PSOE and the Government
The magistrate recalls that Pedraz investigates “an alleged network formed by politicians, socialist militants, lawyers, and businessmen who conspired to ‘destabilize’ the judicial processes affecting the PSOE and the Government”.
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And he adds: “In the course of the investigation carried out by the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard (UCO), it was found that the investigated Leire Díez would have offered Civil Guard and Prosecutor Ministry officials remunerations or favors in exchange for information or acts contrary to the exercise of their duties to ‘attack’ the proper direction of the investigations in the mentioned judicial cases”.
Zamarriego indicates that, after searches carried out in homes and companies, it has been confirmed that Díez “would have had the intellectual and/or financial impulse and support of Santos Cerdán, who would have agreed to remunerate Leire Díez for her services with party funds”.
The judge believes that, for this, Zarrías, Teijelo, and Oliver “would have lent their commercial companies as vehicles to channel these payments”, while the PSOE manager “would have issued the appropriate assignment orders on which false invoices were issued that allowed the transfer of funds from Aptoide destined for Leire Díez and businessman Javier Pérez Dolset”.
In his opinion, the facts investigated in his court “appear inseparably linked to the crimes under investigation” by the National Court, “whose proper investigation requires the processing of a single case in which all the investigated are questioned and the ownership of the money received by Leire Díez is determined”.
“This suggests a single jurisdiction that would enable a more agile investigation and under better conditions,” he acknowledges.
