The three-hour and 19-minute audio recorded by Madrid prosecutor Ignacio Stampa of his meeting with former PSOE militant Leire Díez on May 7 shows that she presented herself as “the person that the PSOE appointed” to investigate irregularities in police reports and those of the Prosecutor’s Office. The recording of that meeting, to which EL PAÍS had access, specifies that the prosecutor asked Díez if he was “the right hand” of the former secretary of the Organization Santos Cerdán. She responded in the affirmative.
“This is strictly confidential and is something that remains here, but let’s say that I am the person who showed the PSOE what is behind all this,” Díez literally stated. Also present at that meeting was the businessman Javier Pérez-Dolset, both accused before the Investigative Court number 9 of Madrid for an alleged crime of corruption and another for influence peddling, accused by the Prosecutor of having organized a “criminal plan” to “discredit” the leaders of the Guardia Civil and Anti-Corruption with the aim of “cancelling” the investigations targeting “politicians and businessmen”.
During the interview, prosecutor Stampa tries to understand who knows about this meeting. Last Wednesday, before judge Arturo Zamarriego, he declared as a witness that he thought Cerdán would participate in the meeting because of the Government’s alleged intention to apologize to him for how he left the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office when he was head of the The Villarejo case. But Díez was found at the location of the meeting, which took place in the office of the entrepreneur Luis del Rivero, who is the fourth interlocutor of the conversation and the person who acts as mediator.
“Well, Santos Cerdán is coming, right?” the official initially asked Del Rivero. “I will move later, then I will have a meeting with him,” explained Leire Díez upon his arrival a few minutes later. It should be remembered that at that time Cerdán was still Ferraz’s lieutenant and was already under investigation by the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Guardia Civil for the corruption plot which ended on 30 June with the order of provisional incarceration. Díez assures during the meeting that “they are all very restless”.
– Press: But who do you mean by everyone? Who? Why? I mean, if I found out… Are you Santos Cerdán’s “right-hand man”?
– Diez: Yes.
– Press: And Santos Cerdán is the party’s organizational secretary.
– Díez: Yes, but I am a “right-hand man” who will never appear anywhere.
The discussion revolves around two points. On the one hand, they delve into the investigation into Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, the audios he recorded and the information that they both manage on prosecutors and judges. On the other hand, they make it clear to Stampa that they consider him the victim of that investigation he conducted when he was in Anti-Corruption and they want to help him in his cases against the Administration. Both suggest without any evidence that the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, is aware of the matter. “But how many think that an injustice has been done to me? How many have found out?” asks the prosecutor. “The three of us sitting at this table are stinkers in front of the public. Now the fight is for justice to be done. That’s why I help Leire in everything I can,” says Pérez-Dolset. “Leire, this situation needs to be reversed with all the casualties. This situation needs to be resolved, no matter who falls, and fortunately, what the president (of the government) said is, ‘Hey, this will be cleaned up, no matter who falls,'” he continues.
The former socialist militant and former PSOE councilor from the city of Vega de Pas (Cantabria) reports that she has been investigating “irregularities in police reports” for about a year, “some members of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office” and other things that didn’t “add up” for various reasons. Thus began the collaboration with Pérez-Dolset, who has the audio that the curator José Manuel Villarejo has recorded for years.
According to Pérez-Dolset in front of Stampa, in the spring of 2024, when the judge indicted the wife of the president of the government, Begoña Gómez, the former PSOE militant called him. “Leire calls me and ‘hey Javier…’ (sic), of course there is a big stir… Aren’t there all the audios of the president’s (government) spying? And I said yes, and gave them to him,” Pérez-Dolset says. “So the president has already said: ‘clean everything up’,” he underlines. “Clean yourselves,” adds Díez. “Cleaning without limits. Out with the police who falsify reports. Out with the prosecutors who hide evidence. Out with those who invent cases. And the politicization of the judicial system…”, continues Pérez-Dolset.
The former socialist councilor asks him what “stage” his lawsuits against the Ministry of Justice are in and Stampa is surprised that neither Díez nor Dolset know much about his fight with the state attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz, and his predecessor Dolores Delgado, about whom he wrote in a book that has not been read. “I have nothing against him (García Ortiz), I would like to know what they had against me. And now you come to tell me what harm they did in taking me away? As you can understand, I’m amazed!”, he underlines. He says he will raise the bar on what he is telling her “where it needs to be raised.”
On the other prosecutors
Pérez Dolset and Stampa talk for hours about separate pieces of the The Villarejo case and meetings of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. According to the businessman, Judge Manuel García Castellón, investigator of the case, provided him with Villarejo’s audios to decrypt them and his lawyers met with the chief prosecutor Alejandro Luzón to provide them with this material, but he did not want to incorporate them into the investigation. The now retired magistrate denies having given these recordings to anyone who should have been in judicial custody and appearing as a victim in the case against Dolset and Díez.
Stampa also asks if there is any explanation for the fact that the former State Attorney General Dolores Delgado did not renew him as the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office or that the current head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Álvaro García Ortiz, provided any reasons in this regard. “No, he didn’t give it to me,” Díez replies. “What Álvaro has there is Stockholm syndrome with Lola (Dolores Delgado).”
The meeting will also talk about former anti-corruption prosecutor José Grinda, who testified in the case as a witness because he claims to have received an offer from a journalist for a position abroad if he offered sensitive information about his boss, Alejandro Luzón, and if he initiated certain procedures.
Leire Díez also says that García Ortiz has been “in a coma,” but that he asked him for explanations as to why he keeps Luzón as head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. “Now here I am, a bit of a ball player, very pushy, and he has to explain to me why Luzón is still there,” he says. Díez assures that the “people” of the hydrocarbon conspiracy “openly” claim to have “bought an anti-corruption prosecutor”.
Stampa also asks if the general prosecutor’s office is aware of the meeting. “You’ll know. It also measures times, eh”, he replies. The prosecutor explains that if García Ortiz found out about it, more people might know about it. “Yes, it doesn’t matter. If I don’t have problems, moreover, Álvaro’s boss will know. Look what the problem is,” Díez replies. “Álvaro’s boss, do you mean the minister or the president?” asks Stampa. “Everyone,” he concludes.
