The company Dos Mil Palabras, publisher of OkDiario, paid 200,000 euros plus VAT to cover the legal services of Koldo García, former advisor to the Ministry of Transport. According to Cadena SER, the former advisor's lawyer, Leticia de la Hoz, has submitted two invoices to the Audiencia Nacional that prove these payments, which include the costs of his defense in the "mask case", for which he has been sentenced by the Supreme Court to almost 20 years in prison.
The documentation provided includes two payments. The first, of 150,000 euros plus VAT, was made in November of last year, one day after OkDiario published an interview with Koldo García and former minister José Luis Ábalos. In that conversation, the former advisor denounced alleged corruption by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and his wife, Begoña Gómez.
Two different payments of thousands of euros
As for the second payment, for 50,000 euros plus VAT, it was made in January of this year. The invoices were submitted after the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the judge of the Audiencia Nacional Santiago Pedraz lifted the professional secrecy that prevented the lawyer from revealing who had paid for her services.
The investigation into the "Leire case"
Leticia de la Hoz is being investigated in the so-called "Leire case", a case that investigates the alleged existence of a criminal organization linked to the environment of the PSOE. According to the investigations, the group would have tried to contain the damage to the Government and the party derived from different judicial investigations.
In this context, investigators suspected that the PSOE could have assumed the costs of Koldo García's defense in exchange for the former advisor not being harmed in the open judicial proceedings. This hypothesis placed the lawyer in the focus of the investigations, although she had expressed her willingness to identify those who paid for her services, provided she was authorized to do so without violating professional secrecy.
The information from Cadena SER indicates that the station contacted De la Hoz, who declined to comment on the payments. It also tried to get the version of the director of OkDiario, without getting a response.