On May 11, 2025, EL MUNDO published an exchange of messages between José Luis Ábalos and Pedro Sánchez that reflected the extent to which the Prime Minister had relied on someone who at that time was already an ex-everything, indicted for corruption and a few months away from prison. That same morning, the Civil Guard leadership was already launching an internal investigation against the Central Operative Unit (UCO). According to the summary of the Cloacas case, the activation of these internal procedures at the instigation of the director of the Civil Guard, Mercedes González, was one of the plot’s instruments to try to corner the unit that worried the Government and the PSOE.
That internal investigation was swiftly concluded after a warning from the magistrate of the Koldo case in the Supreme Court, Leopoldo Puente: if the agents were scrutinized for that reason, those who would end up subjected to a criminal investigation would be those responsible for initiating that internal investigation.
The magistrate conveyed this to the Civil Guard general designated as instructor, in a “blunt” manner. The general traveled to the Supreme Court and consulted Puente if he had any inconvenience with the initiation of the internal process: “To this query, the magistrate stated bluntly that he did not authorize it and that if the reserved information was opened, he would proceed to open proceedings against both the witness and the person who ordered its opening.”
This was recounted last week to the investigators of the Cloacas case by Puente’s warned party himself, the head of the Weapons, Explosives and Security Command, Antonio Cortés Ruiz. It was to him that on May 11, after the information from EL MUNDO, the Deputy Operational Director (DAO), Manuel Llamas, telephoned to urgently summon him to the General Directorate’s cafeteria. He entrusted him with the investigation and, according to Cortés’ account, instructed him to consult with the two judges who were at that time instructing the Koldo case, the one from the Audiencia Nacional and the one from the Supreme Court, before proceeding.
Two days later, he received “a sealed envelope containing the order to initiate the reserved information, which included the order to proceed and detailed that the objective of opening said verbal information was to clarify a possible leak by the Central Operative Unit in the investigations carried out by this Unit and linked to the news published in the media.”
Before contacting the magistrates, the general discussed the matter with Alfonso López Malo, head of the Judicial Police and superior of the head of the UCO, the unit he was going to investigate. The instructor told him that he was considering consulting the judges of the Koldo case. The head of the Judicial Police advised against it, as they were judicialized matters, anticipating that it would not be to the magistrates’ liking.
López Malo added a piece of information at that meeting that already at that moment exonerated the UCO. “That he had total confidence that the possible leak of information to the press could not have originated in the UCO, since some of the images were subsequent to the date on which the devices were seized, a fact that, in his opinion, ruled out that the origin of said publications could come from the UCO.”
After Alfonso López Malo’s statement to the investigators, this Civil Guard commander contacted them again to emphasize this last point: the internal investigation went ahead despite the fact that he had already offered this data that exonerated the UCO, since some published data were not in the unit’s hands.
In that second appearance, it became clear that the DAO also “was aware” of the “impossibility” that the UCO had leaked the information, despite which the investigation continued. It did not have much further to go and did not survive the warning from Magistrate Puente. When the instructor communicated what had happened to the DAO, the latter ordered the closure of the investigation.
The instructing general had also met with the then head of the UCO. Rafael Yuste warned him that only he would give a statement in the reserved information, “no other component of the UCO would be questioned.” And he warned that he “would not provide any data related to the investigation,” because those were the “instructions” of the judicial authority.
Before the confrontation with Magistrate Puente, the instructing general had addressed the judge of the Audiencia Nacional, Ismael Moreno, in charge of everything related to the Koldo case that the Supreme Court had not assumed. He asked if he had “any kind of inconvenience” for the opening of the investigation. The answer was “that there was no problem in its execution as long as it did not affect the judicial procedure,” according to Cortés’ account.
That same day, the general went to the Supreme Court to meet with Puente. The magistrate was not there and, finally, they arranged a meeting for May 19. Again, he conveyed the assignment he had received and the reason, asking him if he also had objections. The answer was very different and thwarted the internal investigation.
The investigation curtailed by the Supreme Court is one of at least three internal investigations against the UCO promoted by the Civil Guard leadership, all opened in reaction to information that harmed the Government. They were opened by decision of the Civil Guard’s director general, Mercedes González, according to investigation sources. Formally, the opening of two of them was signed by the DAO; another, by the director herself.
The investigation of May 2025 had been preceded by one in December 2024 and was followed by another last September. The latter, again as a result of information published by this newspaper in July that anticipated what was happening within the Civil Guard: Tension in the UCO due to the constant interference of Marlaska’s pawn.
Within that investigation, the head of the UCO was even asked to “submit an organizational chart of the same, indicating that part of its structure that had a direct relationship with investigations linked to the Government, identifying the agents comprising it.”
In his statement to the investigators of the Cloacas case about the pressures received, the former head of the UCO highlighted that the information from EL MUNDO “pointed to other police units,” but that he was not aware “that a reserved information had been carried out regarding these.”
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