Supreme Court Judge Orders Detention Without Bail for Santos Cerdán

Supreme Court Judge Leopoldo Puente ordered the provisional detention without bail of Santos Cerdán this Monday. At the request of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, the judge of the so-called 'Koldo case' decided to imprison the former PSOE Organisation Secretary due to the "high risk" of flight and evidence destruction following the hearing held after his testimony, in which he denied the allegations. The magistrate charges him with crimes of involvement in a criminal organisation, bribery, and influence peddling.

The stance of the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Alejandro Luzón, was crucial for Cerdán's imprisonment. He changed his position compared to the other two main suspects in the 'Koldo case', José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García, on whom the judge maintained the previously imposed precautionary measures last week with the prosecutor's support: passport withdrawal, prohibition from leaving the national territory, and biweekly appearances before the judicial authority.

The former number three of the PSOE testified for an hour and a half as a suspect following a report by the Civil Guard's Central Operational Unit (UCO), which places him, along with the former Transport Minister and his then-advisor, at the centre of an alleged scheme of commission payments in exchange for rigging public works contracts. Cerdán, who denied all indications and claimed he "did not take a single euro" and was a victim of "political persecution," according to legal sources, arrived at the Supreme Court shortly before 10:00 a.m. accompanied by his lawyer, Benet Salellas, amidst great media expectation and shouts of "corrupt."

During his appearance, in which he only answered his lawyer's questions and offered to respond to the judge, although the latter did not wish to intervene, Cerdán stated regarding Koldo's incriminating recordings that "he does not know if it is his voice, nor does he know the date of them, let alone their literalness," thus opening the door to preparing an expert report to verify their authenticity. "I have not paid Ábalos or Koldo, nor has the PSOE taken any money. I only received 600 euros from Koldo for a debt he had with me," the suspect stated, also denying the alleged illegal financing of the party.

Similarly, the former socialist leader rejected any involvement in Sevinabar, one of the key companies in the investigation, and dismissed the validity of the "private deed" he signed with the company's administrator, Antxon Alonso, who is under investigation in the case, in June 2016. "The contract states that it was not executed (not notarised) and that it was broken a few days later," Cerdán added. His interest in this company, then a consultancy, was because in 2015, after a disastrous electoral result for the party in Navarra, he was close to leaving politics, and Alonso offered him a job, "but it never happened," he said.

Regarding his interest in public works contracts, as revealed by recordings made by Koldo García, Cerdán explained that his interventions "were not for awarding but to ensure they were tendered due to the party's commitment to certain projects in their electoral programmes," and once announced, "he no longer intervened at all." "I don't know De Aldama (the network's 'fixer' businessman) at all, I have never seen him, and he lies when he says he was with me in a café opposite Ferraz (PSOE headquarters) and that he gave me 15,000 euros for intervening in a contract," he argued.

The suspect denied, therefore, any increase in wealth - "I still have the same house since 1995, it is mortgaged, and all my money is in the bank accounts that are already being investigated," he explained to the judge - and attributed to Ábalos the fact that Koldo García went from being the minister's driver to a board member of State Ports and a director of Renfe Mercancias within Transport. A mention with which Cerdán tried to dissociate himself from the activities of both and refute the conclusions of the UCO report from last June 5, which assigns him a leading role in placing Koldo in the ministry to influence Ábalos.