In parallel, a new witness has testified in the Leire Díez case at the National Court. Daniel Mateo, a collaborator with the Civil Guard since the 1990s, acted as an intermediary to arrange two meetings between her and Rubén Villalba, the commander of the armed institute under investigation in the Koldo case.He explained that Koldo García – a trusted friend he knew from anti-terrorism efforts – told him that everyone in the PSOE answered the phone for the so-called plumber of the PSOE, who dealt directly with Santos Cerdán and even had access to ministers. “I gave him credibility and it scares me,” he admitted. Likewise, Leire Díez told him she was speaking on behalf of the one. Who is it? He asked her if it was Cristiano Ronaldo or Florentino Pérez, and she replied – according to his account – first that it was the president and then that it was Pedro. Just Pedro.Before the judge, he also stated that Leire Díez claimed that Mercedes González, the director general of the Civil Guard, who is also under investigation, was “aware of everything” and awaiting the outcome of that meeting. In fact, at one point, while they were still there, she spoke on the phone with someone named Mercedes, who could have been her. Furthermore, Leire Díez conveyed that they were “unhappy” at Moncloa with the DAO, Manuel Llamas, because he was not addressing the cases that were tarnishing the Spanish president.Shortly after, Santiago Pedraz added a new investigated person: Leonardo Marcos, who was the director of the Civil Guard from June 2023 to September 2024. The former head of the UCO said he had complained that a request in the investigation of Sánchez's brother was “procedural and malicious.”
Begoña Gómez signs Josep Pujol's lawyer for the jury trial
Pedro Sánchez's wife dispenses with Antonio Camacho and places herself in the hands of Jaime Campaner
MadridAfter the Madrid Court has endorsed that she be tried by a popular jury –although two charges against him have been dropped and his passport returned– and that Hazte Oír has requested thirteen years in prison for her, Begoña Gómez shakes up the board and, according to sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ARA, has decided to change lawyers. In this way, she dismisses the lawyer who has defended her throughout the entire two-year investigation, Antonio Camacho, and signs Jaime Campaner, who is also Josep Pujol Ferrusola's lawyer.
It will not be the first high-profile case that Jaime Campaner is handling. He defends, for example, footballer Rafa Mir, who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for a crime of sexual assault and another of injuries. In addition, he was the expert to whom the board of directors of Barça, chaired by Joan Laporta, turned for advice on the legal dispute against Josep Maria Bartomeu following the report forensic. He also served as the lawyer for the ex-first lady of Peru and the so-called devil's advocate, who defended –among others– the Iraqi Saddam Hussein or the Serb Slobodan Milošević.
Eleven years ago, he published his thesis: The confession preceded by the unconstitutional obtaining of evidence. And, in the second edition, the person responsible for writing the prologue was judge Manuel Marchena, who presided over the court that tried the pro-independence leaders for the 1-O. A law graduate from the University of the Balearic Islands, he was the best of his class and holds a master's degree in international economic criminal law from the University of Granada and a doctorate cum laude in procedural law by the Complutense University of Madrid. Likewise, he is an academician of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Spain and a member of the advisory committee of the International Center for Research in Penal Sciences of the University of Munich.
Takes over from Antonio Camacho, who took on the defense of Pedro Sánchez's wife in April 2024, when Judge Juan Carlos Peinado began investigating her for business corruption and influence peddling. Camacho was Minister of the Interior under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero from July to December 2011, a position he held after Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba's resignation and after having been his number two as Secretary of State for Security since 2004. Later, during the first three years of Mariano Rajoy's legislature, he was a PSOE deputy in Congress.
The change of lawyer for Begoña Gómez comes 24 hours after Pedro Sánchez again defended her innocence and again denounced that she is the victim of a “political cause”. “With this strategy, people with a past of integrity and professionalism are dehumanized, and who have even sacrificed a good part of their professional development simply because I am the president of the Spanish government,” he said. And he justified that his wife left the company where she had been working for ten years when he arrived at Moncloa to “avoid any conflict of interest” and “any problem that might arise, even if it were artificial and intentional”.
The “original sin” of the Pujol case
During the trial of the Pujol case, which was submitted for sentencing two months ago, Jaime Campaner was one of the lawyers who highlighted the influence of Operation Catalonia in the genesis of the investigation. During the preliminary proceedings, in November, he presented the front page of El Mundo with the screenshot about the fortune of the Pujol family in Andorra as the “original sin” of the case and presented it as a “banking striptease”. He also denounced that the evidence was obtained in an “unconstitutional and criminal” manner and alluded to the role of José Manuel Villarejo: “There are rational indications of the participation of subjects linked to state power”.