The Cerdán case regarding the alleged rigging of public works, which was taken over by the National Court at the beginning of the year after former minister José Luis Ábalos lost his parliamentary immunity before the Supreme Court, has experienced a new boost in recent days. The investigating judge Ismael Moreno has authorized the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard to expand its investigations to the bank accounts and financial products of several members of the family of Santos Cerdán, former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE. In turn, the judge has ordered that the agents be provided with the “files” that the ONIF (National Office for Fraud Investigation) may have on three construction companies implicated in the plot, so that they can analyze that information and incorporate it into upcoming reports.
The judge also provided the UCO this Monday with new documentation sent by the Treasury of Bizkaia — concerning the wife and another company linked to Antxon Alonso, the alleged partner of Cerdán — and warned that he is awaiting a new report from the agents on another suspicious work (the doubling of the Belate tunnels, in the Navarra community).
The case concerning Cerdán constitutes a separate piece from the Koldo case. The investigations into fraud in the purchase of masks during the pandemic — for which José Luis Ábalos and his former advisor Koldo García, as well as the middleman Víctor de Aldama, were tried and convicted this year — led to a parallel line of investigation into another alleged corrupt plot led by Cerdán, supposedly dedicated to trying to intervene in public contracts and works. The UCO maintains that the socialist leader created it during his time in Navarra (where he was a regional deputy and Secretary of Organization of the PSN), where he had the help of Koldo García. And that, when Ábalos arrived at the Ministry of Transport and appointed García as his advisor, he extended that network to the central Administration.
The UCO’s thesis is that Cerdán is at the top of the plot and that he used a company (Servinabar) as a front to channel the alleged kickbacks he received for the contracts. That company was formally in the name of his friend Antxon Alonso, but investigators believe that the socialist controlled it behind the scenes. “Santos and his family environment would have disposed of part of the company’s funds in different concepts,” emphasizes a Civil Guard report from July 15, which estimated at least 320,000 euros the “income” that the former Secretary of Organization and his family could have pocketed between 2015 and 2024.
This analysis included an exhaustive study of the socialist’s asset evolution, but also proposed to the judge to extend the investigations. The agents asked the judge to authorize them to request information from five banks on about twenty accounts and financial products linked to Cerdán’s “family environment” (his wife, daughter, sister, and brother-in-law, “who would also have benefited from funds coming from Servinabar”). And Judge Moreno agreed last Wednesday: “A possible source of undeclared income by Santos Cerdán is observed, revealed through indications such as: cash income of apparently unknown origin between 2014 and 2017; and reduction of card expenses and cash withdrawals from 2019, coinciding with Ábalos’s ministerial period and the awarding to Acciona of the files under investigation.”
“Given the close relationship with people in his family environment, it is necessary to access their financial information in order to complete the financial study of Santos Cerdán and his environment,” emphasized the resolution signed by Judge Moreno, which has had the support of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. The UCO wants to clarify if money flowed between them and, if so, where it came from. In fact, among the 320,000 euros of irregular “income” already attributed to the former PSOE senior official and his family, the agents include housing rents, vehicle renting, furniture purchases, personal expenses through credit cards, and salaries paid to the wife, sister, and brother-in-law of the former socialist leader. The Civil Guard highlights, for example, 1,300 euros per month that Francisca Muñoz, Cerdán’s partner, received for months from a company in Armilla (Granada) for which she supposedly never worked. The armed institute has also highlighted that Servinabar tried to buy an apartment in Madrid for the couple valued at one million euros.
Meanwhile, Judge Moreno gave the green light last Thursday to the Prosecutor’s initiative to collect the “files” held by the ONIF (National Office for Fraud Investigation) on three companies implicated in the plot (Mer Construcción, Levantina, and OPR). “They are of interest for clarifying the facts,” the judge stresses, requesting information related to the “taxes accrued in the fiscal years 2021, 2022, and 2023.”
This step is not trivial. The file has linked these three companies and their managers with suspicious public works contracts. In fact, the Supreme Court has already charged and interrogated several of their executives, even withdrawing their passports and prohibiting them from leaving the country: José Ruz, from Levantina; the brothers Antonio and Daniel Fernández Menéndez, from OPR; and Fernando Merino, from Mer Construcción and former senior official of Acciona. The four denied paying kickbacks in exchange for contracts.