The Supreme Court opened yesterday to investigate whether the PSOE managed parallel accounting to cover representation expenses after the Civil Guard’s revelations about the assets of those involved in the “Cerdán case” plot. What’s more, the high court will call former manager Mariano Moreno to explain the cash delivery with which the current head of ENUSA resolved these payments for years to all those who had an “entity” in Ferraz.
The suspicion that the party may have financed itself irregularly – the President of the Government always denies this – has reopened an old war in the PSOE. The core of leaders who opted from the beginning for the Secretary General, Pedro Sánchez, do not hesitate to deny the major in conversation with LA RAZÓN. «What is the question? That the management had a B box before governing? They will be accounting mismatches. “Advances may be confused with subsequent payments,” justifies a socialist leader after it emerged that Koldo García, José Luis Ábalos’ former assistant, received at least 7,000 euros more than what Ferraz certified in 2017 and 2018, as revealed by El Español.
The Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños, was not able to explain the matter and limited himself to playing it down: “The amounts are so minor that they will be clarified, as all the accounts that have to do with the Socialist Party are being clarified,” he said. The problem is that the ‘old guard’ that Sánchez fought against in the 2017 primaries is suspicious, with all this information, of the way in which the president reached the General Secretariat.
«It’s impressive. “They want to normalize everything that is being known,” explains a socialist with experience in the party. «All this is very easy. That they credit the money that has been withdrawn in cash from the banks. That 100,000 have been taken out? Well, let them show that 100,000 have been delivered and say: ‘Here are the tickets,'” explains another socialist who does not agree with Pedro Sánchez’s current team in the PSOE.
The management, in truth, is trying to throw things out: «All the hoaxes, insidiousness, manipulations and malicious misrepresentations that are necessary will be launched. Anything goes. “Whoever can make him do it,” laments a member of the executive.
Nine years ago the PSOE divided in two. It was October 1, 2016, during the most turbulent Federal Committee in memory on Ferraz Street. Pedro Sánchez tried to retain control of the party, but was defenestrated. Although he returned to Ferraz’s noble office in the 2017 primaries. The problem for a good part of critical socialists is that they regret that everything is beginning to fall apart.
Everyone remembers that, according to the Civil Guard report that sent Santos Cerdán to preventive detention, the former Organization secretary ordered Koldo to rig votes in the PSOE primaries that Sánchez won in 2014. It should be remembered that it was the party management, through the Organization secretariat, that decided whose expenses were to be covered and what concepts were defrayable. And the party’s own ethical code makes it clear that “austerity implies making effective and efficient use of resources, particularly by people with responsibility for economic management.” In fact, Sánchez himself admitted having received cash “on some occasions.”
The aforementioned former manager, Mariano Moreno, financially managed all the socialists’ electoral campaigns in 2019 and was responsible for the asset management of the PSOE from June 2017 to October 2021. So he is the best suited to explain how the fund with which the party paid the representation expenses of its members was funded, which is what the judge wants to know.