The Central Operating Unit (UCO) faces the challenge of finding the money from the bites that Santos Cerdán allegedly pocketed. Until now, researchers have determined their role as “mediator” in the awards of public works and “manager” of the funds obtained in exchange for the amaños. But it is necessary to find the reason for the performance of former ‘number three’ of the PSOE. For now, there is no trace where the money that allegedly pocketed and that raises the doubt of whether it was not him, but the party, the main recipient, something of what indications have not appeared so far.
Agents have asked the judge to access all movements of 310 bank accounts in the last 11 years. The UCO places the starting point of its investigations on January 1, 2014. Since then and until today there will be not a movement in those accounts, open in 35 societies, which is left without scrutinizing. The agents will cross the dates of the movements with the awards under investigation and the conversations and messages seized to Koldo García. The loss of Santos Cerdán, if it finally occurs, marks the start of a new phase of the investigation. On Thursday he announced that he would deliver his deputy minutes. In the last minute of this Friday I had not taken that step.
In a corner of the UCO report is the key with which civil guards intend to access a new dimension of the case. Where the scandalous content transcripts end, point 10 of the attestation, the “proposal for actions”. “The progression of this line of investigation requires, among other actions, the beginning of some inquiries about the aforementioned deputy, currently agreed, as well as the practice of subsequent proceedings necessary for the clarification of the facts,” warned the UCO on June 5.
Five days later the intentions of the researchers began to emerge. Dozens of agents were deployed by nine points of the Spanish geography with orders of judicial commandments. José Luis Ábalos, his home and a place used as a storage room they congregated journalists in Valencia. There were 48 hours left to know what the civil guards based on these records. The explanation was in the crowded of the UCO that would shock the Spanish policy on Thursday.
Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Balas chose that day to participate in two of the tickets with judicial authorization. They are the records that took place in Pamplona, corresponding to the home and the company of Antxon Alonso. The UCO places the Guipuzcoan businessman, friend of Santos Cerdán, in the approach, the knot and the outcome of the “criminal organization.” His company Servinabar 2000 was created as a “channel” of the bites from Actiona a decade ago.
The Great Constructora of the Entrecanal Family is in the spotlight of the UCO. The entrance to the Ibex Society is its former executive Fernando Merino. In the devices found to Koldo, the agents write, the head of Acciona appears for Navarra and La Rioja until 2021 “pointing to works that would be of interest” for their company, “which would have subsequently generated consideration to those investigated.” The seized messages also reveal that Merino was able to influence the choice of certain profiles as high positions of the ministry.
In addition to registering their home, the civil guards asked that Merino’s corporate mail be required while working there. They have also requested that the company deliver the entire file of five awards, two of the General Directorate of Roads and three others of ADIF, executed alone or in temporary union of companies.
“Santos has stayed with money”
The judge considers that there are “consistent indications” that Santos Cerdán participated in a plot of collection of commissions linked to public works, but for now it is not clear neither the amounts nor the employment that the secretary of Organization of the PSOE made of them.
References to the alleged bites that Cerdán would have benefited only in several in conversations that Koldo García had with Ábalos and that he secretly registered for years. “Santos has stayed with money in front of me [sic]”, The exassor told his boss in November 2023, in a conversation in which both, who had been out of the ministry for more than two years, speak angry at the amounts that were supposedly due to their efforts while they were active in an department that manages a budget of more than 10,000 million euros per year.
“The son of saints has used me for fifteen years and has not given me anything. And I can tell you a thousand things, win 500 tickets that Gipuzkoa gave him and a thousand more things,” he adds minutes later. “The Gipuzkoa” or “El Giputxi” is the appellation with which they referred to the businessman Antxon Alonso.
The known audios and messages through the UCO report also do not yield conclusions that point to an irregular financing of the PSOE to which the judge does not allude to the order in which he directs the investigation against Santos Cerdán. Yes there is a message of March 15, 2022 in which Koldo García writes to the general director of the Ministry to warn him that they were going to call him from the PSOE Management. “It’s just to tell you that I think they are going to ask you for the tax,” says Koldo García.
The report is that, hours later, the exassor is interested in if the call has occurred. The former high position replies that the person responsible for management “had sent him a form, but had not specified amount.” The UCO “infers” that “it was asked to make some kind of economic contribution.” This Friday, the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, ruled out that it was an indication of irregular financing and said that this mention of the “tax” is the “voluntary fee” that the PSOE public positions contribute to the training based on the public salary and that “internally” receives the denomination of “tax.”
The seized messages also refer to the “livestock”, which is the code name with which those involved referred to political parties and, in this case, to the PSOE, the agents maintain. The allusion is made by businessman José Ruz, indicated by paying “consideration” to Ábalos and his former advisor in exchange for the construction company of which he is a shareholder, Levantina. “What win the livestock of having people out of the dance?” The businessman writes to Koldo García, in reference to the existence of companies that would be left out of the awards and the inconveniences that that was generating.
In the proposals of action of the UCO, an uncertain future is drawn for some positions of the Ministry of Transportation that are not yet charged in the Supreme Court. In the report, the agents themselves say about their work, “a relationship of evidence was established from which the influence that Koldo would have exerted on the headlines of Adif and the General Directorate of Roads could be deduced in order to achieve the irregular award of a series of public works.”
The researchers detail that it is Isabel Pardo de Vera, who after presiding over Adif was appointed Secretary of State of the Ministry, and Javier Herrero, ceased from the Directorate of Roads in 2022. She is charged in the part of the case investigated in the National Court. Herrero, already retired, has declared a witness in the Supreme Court and said that at no time he was aware of the existence of awarded awards.
Source: www.eldiario.es
