Two investigations have just intersected and many characters appear in both. On one side, Judge Arturo Zamarriego (from the Court of Instruction number 9 of Madrid) had been investigating since the summer of 2025 the former socialist member Leire Díez and the businessman Javier Pérez-Dolset as authors of a “criminal plan” to “discredit” the leaderships of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, with the aim of “nullifying” and “squandering” investigations affecting politicians. On the other, the judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz was secretly leading another case that by the end of the year, related to rigging public contracts and illegal commission payments, had resulted in the arrest of Leire Díez and the former director of the State Industrial Holdings Company (SEPI) Vicente Fernández Guerrero. Now Judge Pedraz has just escalated the matter by also indicting Pérez-Dolset, Cerdán, the former Presidency counselor of the Andalusian Government Gaspar Zarrías, and the PSOE manager Ana Fuentes. Additionally, the lawyer of Santos Cerdán, Jacobo Teijelo; the former lawyer of the ministerial advisor Koldo García, Ismael Oliver; and a civil guard indicted in a hydrocarbons case, Juan Sánchez Yepes, are being investigated.
The predictable, according to various sources of the investigation, is that Judge Pedraz will end up requesting from magistrate Arturo Zamarriego his case so that all the facts are investigated in the same court. In this case, in the National Court. The object under analysis is the same: to know if there was a plot formed by politicians, socialist members, lawyers, and businessmen who conspired to undermine the corruption cases that had been judicialized since 2023, such as the Begoña Gómez case, the Koldo case, or the proceedings against Pedro Sánchez’s brother.
Already in the investigation led by Zamarriego there were indications provided by prosecutors who met with Leire Díez or Pérez Dolset. For example, an audio recorded by the former Anti-Corruption prosecutor Ignacio Stampa, in which the former member was heard saying: “I am the person that the PSOE has put in to see what is behind this.” In that recording, Díez introduced herself as the “right hand” of Santos Cerdán and asked Stampa about delicate matters concerning the chief Anti-Corruption prosecutor Alejandro Luzón. In another recording where Díez, Pérez Dolset, and also the lawyer Jacobo Teijelo appeared gathered, she asked a hydrocarbons suspect for material to discredit the head of the UCO: “I want Balas,” she said, referring to Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Balas.
In any case, according to judicial sources, the indications accumulated by Judge Pedraz are much greater and, therefore, the case has escalated with all these indictments. The secrecy may be lifted in the coming days and the role of each of the investigated will be further examined.
Leire Díez
The former PSOE member requested her voluntary resignation from the party on June 3, 2025, precisely after the first of the audios that was made public was leaked, in which she said: “I need Balas, that’s clear.” In exchange, to the hydrocarbons businessman who was her interlocutor (Alejandro Hamlyn) she offered deals with the Prosecutor’s Office to reduce a possible sentence request in her case. Then, Díez was accused of doing ‘plumbing’ work for the party that was immersed in the first corruption cases investigated, precisely, by the UCO unit led by Balas. She held a subsequent press conference and explained that the reality was that she was working as a journalist and investigating hydrocarbons topics to write a book. “Neither plumber nor coward,” she said.
Later, on July 31, 2025, the Court of Instruction number 15 of Madrid opened an investigation against her for crimes of bribery and influence peddling. A flood of popular accusations appeared in the matter as associations of civil guards or as the retired judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón, who claimed that attempts had also been made against him. During these months, Zamarriego has been taking witness statements on this matter.
Additionally, the UCO arrested her on December 10 while she was driving along Paseo de la Castellana (Madrid). It then became known that she was also being investigated in this National Court procedure led by Santiago Pedraz. For five allegedly fraudulent operations related to SEPI totaling 132.9 million euros. She allegedly received illegal commissions through a company called Mediaciones Martínez S.L.
Santos Cerdán
The former PSOE Secretary of Organization was also forced to resign and leave his seat when the UCO in June 2025 implicated him in the so-called Koldo case. Recordings made by the ministerial advisor of Transport Koldo García implicated him in the alleged rigging of public works contracts and the collection of kickbacks. The Supreme Court ordered his provisional imprisonment for almost five months. In the public works rigging case, his friend Joseba Antxon Alonso and a company called Servinabar, which according to the UCO, Cerdán could have had a stake in through which he collected a percentage for the Transport contracts awarded, are also under investigation.
He has always distanced himself from his relationship with Leire Díez and has assured that he never gave her orders to dismantle any case. Both have maintained the same version before Judge Zamarriego, although Cerdán acknowledged that upon his release from prison he had spoken by phone with the former member. Now, legal sources indicate that this investigation shows that both were indeed connected.
Ana Fuentes
Ana Fuentes is the PSOE manager and, therefore, the figure who controls the party’s economic structure. Under her command is every accounting movement of the formation. The magistrate considers that there are indications of her “responsibility,” “at least as an accomplice” in the commission of the crimes, and “as the author of the possible crime of falsification in commercial documents by issuing mendacious invoices.” According to sources from the investigation, it is being analyzed whether false invoices were created to pay some of the mentioned implicated with other concepts and that they set in motion operations to sabotage judicial matters.
Javier Pérez Dolset
Businessman linked to the technology and video game sector whom Pedraz indicts for a catalog of crimes. He was president of the Spanish technology company Zed Worldwide, whose bankruptcy reached the National Court. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office accuses him of embezzling nearly 40 million from the company in an alleged subsidy fraud case. This case was handled by prosecutor José Grinda, one of the people about whom Díez and Pérez Dolset himself requested information in their contacts to supposedly obtain sensitive information about judges, prosecutors, and civil guards involved in investigations affecting the PSOE or Government environment.
His name appeared linked from the first moment to the Leire Díez case due to one of those meetings with businessman Alejandro Hamlyn. He also testified before Judge Zamarriego as an investigated person and explained that there were two meetings at Ferraz (PSOE headquarters) when the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, withdrew for a few days after his wife’s indictment. He said that the initiator of the meeting had been the late journalist Patricia López because both had been investigating matters about Commissioner Villarejo for years and believed that his audios and conclusions could interest the Socialist Party. And he added that they also gave relevant information to other political parties.
Read more PNV and Junts abstain in a PP motion in the Senate to ask the Government to call elections
Gaspar Zarrías
The former vice president of the Andalusian Government and former socialist senator Gaspar Zarrías is now indicted in the National Court, but he also testified as a witness in the Leire Díez case of the Madrid court. He had the former PSOE member on payroll through one of his companies for four months in 2024. He paid her 16,000 euros so that, according to his version, she would investigate whether Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo could have been behind the start of the investigation into the ERE, in which he was involved.
Zarrías assured that the contract was planned for six months and that she finally delivered a dossier with information, but that “unfortunately” she did not reach the conclusion that Villarejo was involved in an illegal germ of the ERE matter. The popular accusations in the case against Leire Díez believe that, in reality, the socialist had her on payroll to camouflage the real PSOE hiring.
Ismael Oliver
He is a criminal lawyer whom Pedraz implicates in this plot. Recently he has been in the public eye for having defended Koldo García, the former advisor of José Luis Ábalos. He took over from Javier Pimentel and, quickly, after the report affecting Santos Cerdán about alleged rigging of public works became known, he passed the case baton to Leticia de la Hoz, who continues representing the former right hand of the Minister of Transport.
He also counts among his clients the former head of Venezuelan Intelligence Hugo Armando Carvajal, better known as El Pollo Carvajal, who tried to stop his extradition to the United States for drug trafficking crimes while testifying before the National Court judge Manuel García Castellón about the alleged links of Podemos with Chavismo. He also represented the former Venezuelan deputy minister Nervis Villalobos, who was investigated in the so-called PDVSA case of the National Court. Judge María Tardón ended up archiving the case she initiated against Villalobos suspecting that he laundered funds from the Venezuelan oil company through the purchase of a luxury chalet in Madrid.
Oliver also acted as lawyer for the former Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz, in her asylum request in Spain, as well as for other Venezuelan figures, for example, the opposition member Ernesto Quintero, who was finally extradited from Spain to the Caribbean nation for a fraud crime.
Jacobo Teijelo
Indicted for crimes of bribery, disclosure of secrets, and against the institutions of the State, he is a criminal lawyer with a long career who was linked to the ‘Leire Díez case’ from the beginning.
His office was the scene of the famous meeting with the hydrocarbons businessman in which the businessman Javier Pérez Dolset and the former socialist member also participated. “Tell us something about Balas,” Teijelo also asked at that meeting. They were thus talking about Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Balas, at that time leading the Civil Guard investigations about the woman and the brother of Pedro Sánchez, the Attorney General of the State, or the Koldo case. “I need Balas,” Díez added. And Pérez Dolset added “three or four people maximum,” mentioning the anti-corruption prosecutor José Grinda. He also clarified: “What can we bring to the table? And I tell you this bluntly: An agreement with the State Attorney’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office.” Hamlyn was willing to talk, but in exchange, he asked for “a signed paper.”
Teijelo is also one of the two defense lawyers of Cerdán in the so-called Koldo case, where the former PSOE Secretary of Organization was indicted by the Supreme Court as the alleged ringleader of a plot to collect bribes in exchange for awarding public works. Along with the also lawyer and former CUP deputy Benet Salellas, he has guided the defense strategy, based on two fundamental pillars: the alleged manipulation of the audios and conversations on which this line of investigation is based and lawfare.
Judge Zamarriego had already called him to testify as a witness, but the testimony was suspended because Vox had requested his indictment. Since then, the magistrate had not made a decision. Now, Pedraz has indicted him.
A civil guard
Juan Sánchez Yepes is a civil guard who was part of the UCO anti-money laundering group and to whom Pedraz attributes the same crimes as Teijelo. He is also investigated in another case, the alleged fraud in the hydrocarbons sector led by Gaslow, the company that was a key piece of a network headed by Claudio Rivas, one of the partners of the alleged fixer of the Koldo case, Víctor de Aldama.
![The audios of the ‘Leire Díez case’: “My next conversation will be with the director of the Civil Guard [...] she is someone I trust”](https://worldpressa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/145c4fa71d5fb4bf00cd0ec28971be44.webp "The audios of the ‘Leire Díez case’: “My next conversation will be with the director of the Civil Guard [...] she is someone I trust”")
