The PSOE has filed a complaint with the State Attorney General's Office against the PP and OkDiario after learning that the website paid the defense fees of Koldo García, former advisor to former minister José Luis Ábalos. The socialists take this step after, on November 5, Cadena SER published an audio in which García assures that he agreed with the PP lawyer Alberto Durán to pay his defense expenses and one million euros in exchange for providing information that would serve to bring down President Pedro Sánchez. In the audio sent from prison, he stated that the payment of the money would be made through Okdiario's publishing company. The former lawyer of the former advisor, Leticia de la Hoz, provided two invoices to the National Court to prove that her defense services for García were paid for by the far-right website.
In the complaint, to which EL PAÍS has had access, the PSOE asks the public ministry to investigate these events considering that they may constitute crimes of obstruction of justice, influence peddling, falsification of commercial documents, bribery, prevarication and embezzlement. Those from Ferraz request that, “as a priority”, Koldo García's audios be requested from Cadena SER.
In addition to directly targeting OkDiario and the PP, the socialists' action also includes the director of the website, Eduardo Inda; to the lawyer Alberto Durán, who assumed the representation of the popular in the two branches of the Koldo case that were opened in the National Court and the Supreme Court; and to “the people within the organization who have authorized, ratified or ordered the decisions carried out” by the lawyer who are the subject of the complaint.
The PSOE claims that it learned from the press on October 29 that OkDiario had paid 242,000 euros (VAT included) to cover Koldo García's defense fees between November 2025 and January 2026. This same week, the person who had been the former advisor's lawyer told National Court judge Santiago Pedraz that the website paid for all of his work and that there are no more payers. De la Hoz provided the invoices to the investigator of the so-called Leire Díez case, a procedure in which an alleged plot is investigated that sought to disrupt open judicial cases against the Government or the PSOE. The lawyer was charged in this procedure after businesswoman Carmen Pano asserted that the lawyer had offered her a bribe in exchange for modifying her testimony about an alleged delivery of money to the PSOE headquarters. De la Hoz denies these accusations.
The OkDiario publishing company publicly stated that the subscriptions corresponded to rights to a book and a docuseries about Koldo García. In its complaint, the PSOE questions the version defended by said company. In his opinion, the fact that the contract was signed on November 26, 2025, “just the day before the first payment was made,” “would not respond to a real editorial negotiation, but rather to the pressing need to manufacture a 'garment of legality' that would serve as a cover for the illicit cause previously agreed upon and the payment that was going to be made.”
The socialists also refer to the audios in which Koldo García says that the PP lawyer offered to lower his request for a sentence to avoid his imprisonment, remove his family from the judicial procedure in which they are accused in the National Court, pay for his defense and pay him one million euros. All of this "in exchange for statements that affected relevant people in the Government, of course, the president, especially his wife, former president Zapatero and some others, even lying." The one who was Ábalos's right-hand man assures that he did not agree to the "atrocity" of the popular ones. “And the next day they put me in jail,” he said, referring to his entry into provisional prison, before the trial in which he was finally sentenced to 19 years and eight months in prison.
“Simulated legal business”
The PSOE maintains that the contract defended by OkDiario is a “possible simulated legal transaction.” He insists that "if the cause had been the actual acquisition of rights from Koldo García, the editorial consideration money should have been paid to him in his capacity as assignor." And remember that it was not like that: that the payments were made to the lawyer Leticia de la Hoz "under the unequivocal concept" of "fees, tariffs and expenses for legal advice."
The formation led by Pedro Sánchez asks that the origin of the funds paid be investigated. He emphasizes that Koldo García, in his audios, indicated that the director of the website assured him that the advanced money "would be recovered" with "income from institutional advertising from PP administrations. And he points out that between 2017 and 2026 administrations governed by the popular party have paid the publisher "at least" 1.6 million euros (VAT included) in contracts and 3.5 million euros (without VAT) in institutional advertising.
