The summary of the Leire Díez case is peppered with dozens of names of prosecutors, judges, or police officers about whom former PSOE militant Leire Díez sought information; and of businessmen, lawyers, and all kinds of collaborators who helped the alleged plot led by former Socialist Organization Secretary Santos Cerdán to pull strings to find dirt on Civil Guard or Prosecutor’s Office officials who were fighting corruption. One of the people who appears in the summary eager to join Díez’s activity is former Barça president Sandro Rosell, who, allegedly, introduced her to the lawyer of retired police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo. “Today I’ve been with several football people willing to help,” he stated after meeting Cerdán and Leire Díez in June 2024. Furthermore, messages seized by the Civil Guard’s Central Operative Unit (UCO) show that Rosell was involved in a kind of operation aimed at “recruiting” anti-corruption prosecutor José Grinda.
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The first time Leire Díez wrote to Antonio García Cabrera, Villarejo’s lawyer, she introduced herself directly, ready for a meeting: “I am the person who needs to meet with you, I think Sandro [Rosell] has already mentioned it to you. I would like to talk to you when you can,” she said on July 26, 2024. The next day, Díez told the former Barça president that she already had a date: “I’ve arranged to meet the beret-wearing lawyer [Villarejo usually wears a beret] at 11:30 on Monday.” In the WhatsApp chat between the two, the UCO found 1,304 messages ranging from June 2024 to December 2025, the month in which the former socialist militant was arrested by order of the Audiencia Nacional.
The summary describes how Rosell became involved in the investigated organization from the first contact between Díez and Cerdán with him until he showed himself willing to act as an emissary for a message to anti-corruption prosecutor José Grinda, although they tried to camouflage it as an idea from former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
—Hello Sandro. I’m Leire. It was a pleasure meeting you yesterday. I saw the news in the afternoon, so I can only reaffirm my absolute commitment to help bring this to an end once and for all — wrote the former militant on June 20, 2024.
—Hello Leire. Likewise, a pleasure, you and Santos seemed awesome to me! Yes, whenever you want I’ll tell you what we can do because today I’ve been with several football people who are willing to help! They like the idea. As soon as our man has the info, I’ll come back to Madrid and we’ll see what we do! —replied the businessman.
Sandro Rosell spent 645 days in provisional prison between May 2017 and February 2019, accused of criminal organization and money laundering, despite being finally acquitted. The Audiencia Nacional later established that he should be compensated with 232,500 euros for the time he spent unjustly in prison, but, since then, his logical obsession has been to find out what was behind that artificial investigation that cut short his life for almost two years, according to sources close to Rosell. To do this, he has even sought to speak with Villarejo himself, which is why some sources familiar with these movements point out that, precisely because of these previous inquiries, he was a character that Díez and businessman Javier Pérez-Dolset (also investigated at the top of these proceedings to hinder the action of justice) might be interested in and thus obtain more information about the “sewers.” “I will always be close to people who build,” the former militant told him. “I’m very good at ‘plumbing’,” she added.
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Rosell, Díez, and Pérez-Dolset also shared a WhatsApp group under the name “Mas Martí-Girona.” The Catalan businessman said on March 10, 2025, that “G,” whom the UCO identifies as Grinda, had contacted him. “G has contacted me because he wants to talk to me, that I shouldn’t believe what they say about him…!!! Should I meet him, right? Let’s see what he tells me? (sic),” Rosell wrote.
Previously, the then anti-corruption prosecutor had reported to his superior, chief prosecutor Alejandro Luzón, that a journalist had approached him with a supposed offer written on a sheet of paper telling him that if he helped close certain cases (related to Venezuelans and Catalan affairs), and if he provided information about the origin of the Rosell case or dirt on Luzón himself, they could help him get a position abroad, as well as with his legal problems. According to Grinda’s account, the journalist had stated that Leire Díez was behind that offer.
The summary reveals how, while the former socialist militant sought to approach Grinda through third parties (such as Rosell himself), she also established a communication channel with the woman who had reported the prosecutor for a sexual offense. And she even sought work for her through people from the PSOE.
The messages reveal that, before the meeting between Rosell and Grinda, Leire Díez gave him instructions. “Remember, listen more than talk,” she told him, “but without naming Santos or me. We’ve talked a lot this weekend and maybe I need to be preserved a bit because I have to be on other fronts. We would send a lawyer,” she indicated on March 16, 2025. Rosell added: “I’ll tell him, ‘Pepe, you’re screwed, you’re interested in negotiating with the Government, I’ll tell you who with’.” Pérez-Dolset added the possibility that they could involve Zapatero: “Talk to him, but always referring to his offer to Z. In case he records you, make it clear that he started this.”
Díez told a lawyer to whom she recounted that this meeting was going to take place: “There are things I do with more or less passion, but this guy’s thing I do with a clothespin on my nose.” The UCO has not found messages from the day of the supposed meeting or the following days. This media outlet has tried to gather the Catalan businessman’s version without success.
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