The investigation of the Abalos case in the Supreme Court continues to advance blindly. Santos Cerdán, former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, was imprisoned on June 30 to prevent him from destroying evidence. But four months later, the Civil Guard still has not found that evidence. The investigation maintains that for years public works were rigged in the Ministry of Transportation in exchange for bribes that Cerdán, former Minister José Luis Abalos and his advisor, Koldo García, received. But in recent months the investigation has barely found solid evidence of that looting. A UCO report on some discrepancies detected between the cash payments communicated by the PSOE and the messages from Koldo García's wife about those payments has cast heavy suspicion on the financial management of the party that now governs Spain.
For this reason, the judge of the Supreme Court, Leopoldo Puente, and the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Alejandro Luzón, want to investigate whether the PSOE leadership incurred any crime due to its management of cash payments to pay the expenses of all its staff for seven years (2017-2024). After taking a statement from the previous party manager, Mariano Moreno, Judge Puente decided to send his suspicions to the National Court that is investigating the scandal of the purchase of masks by the Ministry of Transportation during the mandate of José Luis Ábalos.
Judge Puente was not satisfied with the explanations given last Wednesday by former manager Moreno, who confirmed an alleged lack of control when authorizing cash payments against invoices. Nor did he consider that the documentation sent to him by the PSOE clarified his doubts. This group tried to prove its financial management with official banking documentation to rule out the existence of a 'box B', of illegal financing, or of suspicious imbalances in the cash payments that Koldo García, the main advisor of former minister José Luis Ábalos, periodically collected.
The PSOE documented the origin of the cash that it used for seven years (almost one million euros) to pay expenses for the entire party. They took that money—12,000 euros on average per month—from the checking account that the PSOE has open at the BBVA, where exclusively the public subsidies it receives and the fees of its members are deposited. Therefore, the cash payments did not come from any 'box B' but from their official bank account, according to PSOE management. In addition to that, they sent to the judge all the payments in banknotes – never with a value greater than 50 euros because that was what BBVA sent them – that they made for seven years to José Luis Ábalos, Koldo García and Santos Cerdán, in addition to, without specifying names, the Organization area. In total, 189,000 euros distributed among Ábalos (19,859), Koldo García (11,291), Santos Cerdán (30,797) and the workers of the Organization Secretariat (127,738).
Judge Puente and prosecutor Luzón reviewed this documentation and listened to the explanations of the former PSOE manager. And from the reflection of both came the order in which an attempt is made to suggest an alleged bad practice with criminal overtones on the part of the PSOE financial managers. “It was also not verified whether the payments made by the person who obtained the refund had been made by him in cash or through bank intermediation, in such a way that it was not possible that, if the money was advanced by them to satisfy those expenses eventually with funds from an illicit activity – or even criminal -, by compensating them for said expenses, they would not be laundering their origin, especially when, apparently, a person could be in charge of managing the settlement of expenses incurred not by him but by third parties.”
The judge's other theory
The theory of the order in which Leopoldo Puente sends the case to the National Court sounds bizarre. The instructor suggests the possibility that Ábalos will obtain illegal commissions and, to launder them, he will send the party invoices not supported by a credit card receipt for non-existent expenses. The party would pay him those amounts from its official checking account so that the former minister could introduce them into the legal circuit.
This possibility goes poorly with Judge Puente's other theory, according to which the corrupt plot formed by Ábalos, Koldo García and Santos Cerdán would have collected bribes of at least five million euros (1% of the budget of the suspicious works under investigation). Ábalos laundered, according to the instructor's theory, an insignificant part of the bribes that the plot collected (barely 4% of the at least five million euros that they supposedly obtained by rigging works). This is assuming that all the party's cash payments to Ábalos, García, Cerdán and the Organization team can be attributed exclusively to the former Minister of Transport.
If these were his expenses paid by the PSOE and we divided the alleged bribes collected by three, the calculation of this money laundering operation would be more ridiculous. Ábalos would have collected at least 1.6 million euros in illegal commissions and would have laundered 19,859 euros, less than 1.5%
The loser of this entire operation would be the PSOE, which would have paid the former Minister of Transport money from public subsidies that it never recovered.
Ábalos' deceptions, if Puente's theory is confirmed, have now put the PSOE under suspicion of illegal financing. The judge will have to decide in just a few weeks whether to release Santos Cerdán without, from what is known so far, the former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE having destroyed evidence of his corruption, as feared in the order that sent him to prison.