Santos Cerdán demands that the investigation into the 'Leire Díez case' return to the Plaza Castilla courts, questioning the jurisdiction of the Audiencia Nacional

The former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, has filed an appeal in which he rejects that the Audiencia Nacional is the competent body to continue investigating the 'Leire Díez case'. His brief is directed against the decision that keeps the case under the direction of Judge Santiago Pedraz and aligns with Gaspar Zarrías's strategy to try to have the procedure return to the investigating courts of Madrid, where Judge Arturo Zamarriego initially opened the proceedings.

In parallel, the defense of Zarrías, former Minister of the Presidency of the Junta de Andalucía, has sent a letter to the magistrate of the Audiencia Nacional requesting new proceedings. His lawyer, Gonzalo Martínez Fresneda, asks the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard to detail the data dump of the seized devices and provide information on the bank accounts analyzed as part of the investigation.

The brief questions the UCO's actions, arguing that the case began in the Plaza de Castilla courts due to an alleged payment of commissions linked to Mediaciones Martínez in 2021, a company about which Gaspar Zarrías claims to "know nothing." According to the defense, the procedure would have changed abruptly after a Civil Guard report that incorporated "novel evidence" and motivated its transfer to the Audiencia Nacional.

Zarrías's accusation describes this turn as a "leap into the void" and a "deviation from course," while the Prosecutor's Office defends the action with the so-called "progressive crystallization of the procedure," which it considers compatible with the evolution of the investigation. However, the defense replies that it is "a close prospective scrutiny, if not indistinguishable, from general causes."

Added to this front is Santos Cerdán's appeal, which insists that the Audiencia Nacional would also not be competent to investigate this branch of the case. His defense argues that Judge Santiago Pedraz initially instructed a case about Leire Díez and Antxón Alonso linked to alleged irregularities in Mediaciones Martínez in 2021, but that the UCO would have expanded the scope of the procedure towards an alleged operation to interfere in subsequent judicial investigations.

The document, advanced by El País and to which Cadena SER has had access, denounces what it describes as “a self-serving unilateral transformation of the procedural object by the Judicial Police,” by incorporating facts related to alleged maneuvers against investigations that would have affected the PSOE, the Government, and the environment of President Pedro Sánchez between 2024 and 2025.

With both appeals, both Cerdán and Zarrías seek to reopen the debate on the case's judicial competence and halt its progress in the Audiencia Nacional, in full dispute with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the UCO over the real scope of the investigation.

The case summary places former socialist militant Leire Díez and former PSOE Organization Secretary, Santos Cerdán, at the center of an alleged operation aimed at obtaining sensitive information and acting on judicial investigations that affected the PSOE, the Government, and the environment of President Pedro Sánchez.