If anything was clear this Monday, after the statements of former PSOE militant Leire Díez and entrepreneur Javier Pérez-Dolset, it is that the case has only just begun. Both suspects, accused of having organized a “criminal plan” to “cancel” the investigations that targeted “politicians and businessmen”, left such a trail of names that some lawyers, after more than six hours in the courts of Plaza de Castilla (Madrid), commented that they had a headache. The judge of the already baptized as Leire caseArturo Zamarriego has the task of drawing up the list of witnesses who continues to add surnames. One of those who will be called immediately, as he recorded in the courtroom and as confirmed by various legal sources, is the building contractor Luis del Rivero, who acted as an intermediary in the key meeting of the two defendants with the public prosecutor Ignacio Stampa.
Díez had been summoned at 11.30 in the morning, like the entrepreneur Javier Pérez-Dolset, and had arrived a few minutes earlier, in an entrance to the courthouse that was already chaotic because a whirlwind of cameras had pounced on the former deputy mayor of Vega de Pas (Cantabria) and, with a stumble, had almost knocked her to the ground. The actual apparition, however, only began at five in the afternoon. In the morning the judge decided to play the audio contained in the case in the courtroom: the meeting that the prosecutor Stampa recorded on May 7th in Del Rivero’s office; and the one they both investigated in February with hydrocarbon fraud accused Alejandro Hamlyn.
Shortly before two in the afternoon, when the first lawyer in a long line – there are already nine popular accusations with their respective lawyers, plus the three of the defendants – opened the door of the investigative court number 9 in Madrid, some believed that the statements had ended. Nothing could be further from the truth. They hadn’t even started. Judge Zamarriego allowed everyone to go out to eat and called them together again starting at five o’clock.
Between pauses and technical problems – Leire Díez’s deposition had to be blocked because it was not being recorded and the audio collected by Stampa had to stop playing to be sent to the judicial police to improve its sound quality – all those mentioned ended up at home at half past nine in the evening.
The long day left several headlines in the newspapers. The first: both acknowledged two meetings with the former secretary of the PSOE Organization Santos Cerdán in April 2024. Although they did not specify a date, Dolset framed them after the letter of reflection that the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, wrote when his wife, Begoña Gómez, was accused. To him, “a man in disguise” had delivered “in a shantytown” all the audios that Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo recorded during years of espionage and, according to sources present in the statement, he believed that the PSOE might be interested in some of the recordings in which police and judicial irregularities against party members were revealed.
The second: the current Secretary of State for Telecommunications Antonio Hernando, then deputy director of the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government, also participated in one of these meetings. He went, as confirmed by sources close to Hernando, to EL PAÍS, because Cerdán asked him because he knew the The Villarejo case as spokesperson for the Socialist Group in Congress when the PSOE promoted the first commission of inquiry into the issue. These appointments, the suspects said in court, were organized by the journalist Patricia López, director of digital Free news.
The third: both Leire Díez and Pérez-Dolset assured that they had met more people from the PP, Vox, Podemos or Junts. The businessman reported that he had provided all those he considered “victims” of Villarejo’s espionage with material that could be useful for any cause. And in his attempt to investigate this matter he wanted to meet “500 times” with the prosecutor Stampa, who was in charge of that investigation. When he succeeded, according to his story, he did not hesitate to attend the meeting, but he never said what he had heard in the recording made by the public prosecutor, that is, that he had a sort of mandate from the president of the government to “clean up” the judicial and police areas.
Dolset and the former socialist militant denied “recognising” each other in those audios and their defense asked that all the recordings be removed from the proceedings. Díez completely dissociated himself from the socialists and contextualized all his meetings in the work of investigative journalism. He assured that the Google Drive he shared with Dolset and in which they stored information from their investigations was hacked and told the judge that he had suffered threats on his phone and at home after his data was leaked.
In this tangle of names and quotes, various legal sources explain that the identification of all relevant witnesses must now begin to draw the line between reality, truth, half-truth and invention. Leire Díez’s defense has announced, for example, that it will request the statement of the journalist Patricia López to explain what her journalistic work consisted of, and some legal sources advance the intention of requesting that of Cerdán or Hernando. These rumors also explain that the man in the robe will have to call the retired judge Manuel García-Castellón and the commissioner and main defendant of the prosecution. The Koldo case Víctor de Aldama, who consider themselves damaged by the activity of Díez and Dolset.
Judge Zamarriego, for his part, announced that he intended to listen to Luis del Rivero. This Spanish businessman, president of Sacyr and victim of Villarejo’s espionage, was the fourth interlocutor between Leire Díez, Dolset and Stampa. The audio from that day, in which Díez presents himself as “the person who set up the PSOE” and Cerdán’s “right-hand man”, is one of the most convincing indications that fall on both, accused of influence peddling and corruption. For this reason he is the person who can confirm whether in that meeting the former socialist militant spoke about journalism or, instead, was the voice of the recordings.
