Anti-corruption considers that there are indications of the commission of two crimes by the PSOE: influence peddling and bribery. This is clear from the letter with which the Prosecutor's Office responded to the Popular Party's request to now attribute the status of being investigated to the party as a legal entity. The Prosecutor's Office led by Alejando Luzón considered that this decision was hasty, although he did so in an extensive writing that supported the indications of criminal activity of the plot investigated in the Sewers case. It ruled out three of the five crimes put forward by the popular accusation (embezzlement, illegal financing and money laundering), but not those of influence peddling and bribery.
The investigator of the case, Judge Santiago Pedraz, agreed yesterday that it was necessary to carry out numerous procedures before resolving the party's accusation.
Throughout 15 pages, the two assigned prosecutors point out that the evidence indicates that "the PSOE would have made its logistical and financial infrastructure available to the criminal organization that is being investigated here, making possible different organic meetings between the leaders of the group at the party headquarters on Ferraz Street, covering the mobility and accommodation of its different members."
"And what is more relevant," he added, "the allegedly criminal activity of the leaders and participants is financed, through companies created with the collaboration of two lawyers. This action would have been carried out through the then Secretary of the Organization Santos Cerdán.
Anti-Corruption maintains that "there are multiple and of the most varied nature the evidence" that the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard has been collecting "to support these statements."
For the accusation of the match, the key pieces are the current manager, Ana María Fuentes Pacheco and, above all, Santos Cerdán himself. The latter was the one who commissioned the plumber Leire Díaz "to coordinate and execute a series of actions" that sought to "systematically and continuously destabilize" investigations that could "directly or indirectly impact the interests of the PSOE or the Government."
The letter goes on to explain that to articulate the opaque payments to the plumber they would have had "with the presumed concert of the manager [...[ who issued the appropriate order orders on which to prepare mendacious invoices that would allow the transfer of funds to Leire Díez."
In his statement as investigated, Fuentes described the process that the PSOE follows for hiring legal services and to avoid the commission of illegalities, "but he did not know how to specify" the services actually provided by the two external lawyers hired by Cerdán.
A contract, he continues, that occurred "with absolute freedom, with no more control than the presentation of the Order Notes after the provision of the services and the invoice for payment and for which it cannot be verified that they had been provided." With this, the Public Ministry points to the essential element for the party's accusation: that it did not apply an effective regulatory compliance program to avoid illegalities.
Among the procedures that must be carried out before resolving the accusation, prosecutors Elisa Lamelas and Mar Scharfhausen consider it "especially relevant" to specify whether the payments to the plumber Leire Díez, "knowing the purpose of her action, were ordered by the secretary of the organization and paid directly by him from accounts owned by the entity precisely for the commission of the illicit commission."
This would allow "establishing an objective connection between [Cerdán's] actions and the organization's asset structure, specifying [...] whether the control system allowed payments of this nature without any verification."
According to Anticorruption, the use of the organization's funds "to satisfy payments linked to alleged corruption crimes constitutes an indication of singular relevance to resolve" the party's accusation.
But it is not enough that the criminal acts are attributed to the former Secretary of Organization and the manager, but it is necessary to "reconstruct the circuit of decision, authorization, execution and accounting" of these payments, as well as "the controls existing at that time and the specific benefit" obtained by the party. For the PSOE to be charged, all of this must emerge from the proceedings ordered and the pending interrogations.
