Supreme Court Judge Leopoldo Puente opened this Friday a new front of unpredictable outcome in the case against José Luis Ábalos. The magistrate raises the possibility that the former minister and his right-hand man, Koldo García, used the settlements of expenses that were passed to the PSOE for meals, hotels, gasoline or mileage to launder the money from the bribes that they supposedly collected from businessmen with interests in the Ministry of Transport and agreed to send the matter to the National Court.
Puente builds this hypothesis after verifying the few existing controls on refunds that the PSOE paid mostly in cash until 2020. And he focuses, especially, on the fact that the party did not verify whether the payments made by the person obtaining the refund had been made in cash or by card. The instructor's suspicion is that Ábalos and Koldo García were able to pay for meals, transportation or lodging with money coming from “an illicit or even criminal activity” and that they later laundered its origin when the party compensated them for those expenses.
This alleged case of laundering with tickets would constitute a laundering operation of limited scope if the amounts paid in cash by the PSOE to offset expenses are compared with the corrupt loot that the plot allegedly collected in exchange for rigging public works. According to the accounting provided to the Supreme Court, the PSOE paid a total of 189,686.76 euros in cash to Ábalos, Koldo García, Santos Cerdán and the Organization Secretariat of the PSOE between 2017 and 2024. On the other hand, the judge and the Prosecutor's Office raise the alleged collection of bribes to five million euros. According to this, those investigated would have barely been able to launder through this means 3.79% of the alleged loot that investigators are still looking for.
Puente left in writing that those investigated should have taken 5 million in bribes not according to confessions or any evidence of money deliveries. The judge made a calculation that he himself acknowledged responded to speculation, according to which those investigated had pocketed 1% of the contracts in question, “a percentage still very contained in comparative terms with other similar operations.” This other hypothesis was deployed by Puente in the order that justified sending Santos Cerdán to prison and that, to this day, keeps the former secretary of the Socialist Organization in jail without having been tried.
The Supreme Court magistrate admitted in another recent order that in 20 months of investigations, the “significant amounts of opaque money” of the alleged bribes that were allegedly handled by the last two Organization Secretaries of the PSOE and the former right-hand advisor Koldo García have not been found.
The judge has agreed to refer suspicions about money laundering to the National Court after having questioned, as witnesses, the former PSOE manager Mariano Moreno and an employee of the Organization Secretariat, Celia Rodríguez. The summons of both occurred after the latest report from the UCO of the Civil Guard found an imbalance of thousands of euros in cash payments to the former socialist leader and his right-hand man.
According to the judge's order, the former manager and the worker limited themselves to explaining that neither Ábalos nor Koldo García had received more money in cash than what the PSOE had reported: 19,859.07 and 11,291.33 euros, respectively. And that the remaining 127,738.98 corresponded to settlements from the party's “Organization team.”
The magistrate emphasizes the fact that none of the witnesses were able to explain why these funds were “claimed” by Koldo García, who appeared as an advisor to Ábalos in Transport and not in the PSOE. Nor why his wife, Patricia Úriz, who was Ábalos' secretary in the Ministry and not in the party, collected amounts for which there is “no evidence” that they were subsequently distributed by Koldo García in favor of the people on the Organization Secretariat team, as the former manager acknowledged.
The “striking” mismatch and its documentary explanation
In its report, the UCO specified its suspicions in an example. This is an envelope addressed to Ábalos and which was collected by Koldo García in June 2019. According to the information communicated by the PSOE, it should contain 321.29 euros in cash, from the box. However, the report includes a photograph of the envelope with PSOE letterhead that corresponds to that delivery and on which the figure of 826.73 euros appears handwritten.
It is a difference of 505.44 euros that the researchers considered “eye-catching” and that gave rise to a political and media thesis about the existence of a box B in the PSOE. To do this, the researchers put it in context with a conversation four months earlier in which Koldo García “seemed to recognize that, due to the position he held, he received one or two 500 euro bills monthly, known in common language as chistorra.”
“That envelope – the PSOE replied in a letter provided last Friday – contains 321 euros declared as payment to Ábalos for his expenses and, secondly, 505 euros of expenses for the maintenance of the PSOE organizational team that Ábalos accompanied on his trips or party activities.” Or what is the same, the imbalance was due to the fact that that envelope included the reimbursement for Ábalos but also for other members of the Organization team.
elDiario.es has had access to the expense settlement sheet that totals 505.44 euros for different members of the Organization team, divided between 389.99 corresponding to “representation” and 115.55 corresponding to “travel.” The document is dated June 10, 2019 and has three different signatures, in addition to the stamp with the slogan “accounted for.” Restaurant tickets are attached to it, some with amounts such as 23 euros, 4.8 euros or 69.69, in the highest figure of the vouchers. Taxi receipts also appear, although not all of them can be clearly appreciated due to the disappearance of the ink in these six years.
17 million in transfers and “one hundred and something thousand” in cash
The judge also calls into question the “procedure” that the PSOE used to obtain the cash with which it faced different expenses. Among them, the return of these advances. The party sent a letter to the instructor in which it explained that it was first making a request to the entity where its operating account is open, BBVA, through “a formal letter duly signed by the authorized person in charge.” In it he specified the total amount required, the debit bank account and the distribution of bills: how many 50s, 20s, 10s and 5s.
The next step was the delivery of the cash to the headquarters on Ferraz Street through a security company specializing in funds transportation and hired by the bank. That company then notified BBVA of the delivery, the bank recorded it and that record served as accounting proof of the operation. Once the banking transaction appeared, the accounting record was carried out, which reflects the departure from the PSOE bank account and the entry into cash.
According to the judge, “the origin of the cash amounts that the PSOE had at its headquarters to compensate for these expenses was not sufficiently explained,” although the manager explained the system that the party had detailed in its writing. He also highlighted that this account was funded by party subsidies due to its representativeness, membership fees and donations audited by the Court of Accounts.
Puente reiterates that “the “reasons” that advised that expense reimbursements be made in cash were not sufficiently explained either, nor from when and until when this procedure was carried out. But it ignores a detail that the former manager offered as an example in his statement to put into context the cash amounts handled by the PSOE. Thus, he stated that in 2018 the party had expenses of 17 million euros “at the federal level.” And that, in the box, he entered just “one hundred and something thousand.” “The rest, all transfer,” he stated.