The judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz has agreed to take over the investigation that his colleague from the Madrid courts, Arturo Zamarriego, had kept open since July 2025 regarding the alleged maneuvers of the former PSOE member Leire Díez against the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and several members of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. In a judicial resolution, dated last Friday and made public this Monday, the magistrate accepts the decision made three days earlier by Judge Zamarriego to transfer the investigations that Pedraz himself had requested, considering that both his investigation and the one opened months later are “indissolubly” linked and their clarification requires “the processing of a single one.”
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Thus, last Friday officials from Zamarriego’s court brought to the National Court 14 volumes with 3,847 pages to be incorporated into Pedraz’s case. They also brought two memory devices. One, with audio files provided by prosecutor Ignacio Stampa, who has denounced that the plot tried to bribe him; and another with documents requested to be incorporated into the case by one of the defendants, journalist Pere Rusiñol, all pending analysis. In this way, the magistrate, who last December began investigating Díez for leading an alleged “plot to destabilize” various “judicial proceedings affecting” the PSOE, the Government, and Pedro Sánchez’s environment, now has the entire investigation in his possession.
However, the magistrate recalls that the National Court has yet to rule on the appeal filed by Díez’s defense precisely against his decision to claim the case being handled in the Madrid court. The former socialist member considers that this move by Pedraz violates her rights by opening what she calls a “parallel” case for the “same facts” for which she was already charged in the courts of Plaza de Castilla.
This resolution puts an end to the dispute that both judges had maintained over the case since June 1. Pedraz, who at the end of last year ordered the arrest of Díez, former SEPI president Vicente Fernández, and businessman Antxon Alonso for alleged irregularities in public contracts, had extended his investigations to the plot allegedly led by the former socialist member to hinder judicial cases against the PSOE. In fact, in the following months, he ended up charging the former PSOE Organization Secretary Santos Cerdán, former Presidency Counselor of the Andalusian Government Gaspar Zarrías, and PSOE manager Ana María Fuentes Pacheco, among others.
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Therefore, upon lifting the secrecy of the case in June, he requested Zamarriego to recuse himself from his investigations, considering that his investigation was broader, covered more crimes, and involved people not listed as suspects in the Madrid court’s file. The judge of Plaza de Castilla had opened his case much earlier, in May 2025, following a complaint from the ultra organization Hazte Oír after El Confidencial published audios in which Díez allegedly offered favors to businessman Alejandro Hamlyn, then under investigation in the National Court for an alleged fraud in the hydrocarbons sector, in exchange for information against the Civil Guard and the Prosecutor’s Office. Besides the former socialist member, the accused included Rusiñol and businessman Javier Pérez Dolset.
After Pedraz’s request, Zamarriego delayed his decision arguing that he had pending investigative actions, including an expert report on a recording provided by prosecutor Stampa. The Prosecutor’s Office appealed this last decision, considering that this evidence was not essential to decide on the transfer of the case. Finally, last week Zamarriego agreed to hand over the case to his colleague at the National Court. In that resolution, the judge highlighted Pedraz’s investigations, stating that they had revealed the existence of “an alleged plot formed by politicians, socialist members, lawyers, and businessmen who conspired to ‘destabilize’ the judicial processes affecting the PSOE and the Government.”
The head of the Madrid Court of Instruction Number 9 emphasizes that the UCO investigation carried out within the framework of the National Court case had allowed escalation from Díez — who was so far the focus in Zamarriego’s case — to higher levels within the alleged criminal network. The judge stressed that the documentation seized by the agents pointed, in fact, to the former socialist member having the “impulse and intellectual and/or financial support” of Cerdán, who would have agreed to pay her “for her services with party funds.” He also recalled that the National Court investigation in turn points to Zarrías and lawyers Jacobo Teijelo and Ismael Oliver, for allegedly having “lent their companies as vehicles to channel such payments” so that Díez would receive funds. Similarly, he highlighted that Pedraz’s case pointed to the PSOE manager for allegedly giving “the appropriate commissioning orders on which false invoices were issued that allowed the transfer of party funds destined” for Díez and Pérez Dolset.
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