The auditor of the PSOE's accounts who is not convinced by the unique financing

MadridThe audit of the PSOE's accounts by two university professors –whose result was made public earlier this weekThis has generated a second round of scrutiny: the profile of those tasked, at the party's own request, with reviewing its expenses. Both the political and media right have questioned the credibility of the forensic report that rules out the existence of illegal financing within the party. One of the arguments used to cast doubt on the auditors' main conclusion is their ideological alignment with the Spanish government and the fact that one of them, César Martínez Sánchez, has a clear connection to it. He was an advisor to Pedro Sánchez at the Moncloa Palace and to Manuela Carmena at the Madrid City Council.

Martínez Sánchez is a tenured professor of financial and tax law at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). His curriculum vitae, published on the university's website, lists his experience as a university teacher and researcher—including international stays in Germany and Austria—as his time in the General Secretariat for Economic Affairs and the G-20 in the Prime Minister's Office from 2010 to 2021. Previously, between 2018 and 2019, he was also an advisor on financial matters for the Madrid City Council. He highlighted this experience in a 2023 article published by a foundation linked to Basque socialism, titled "From the Engine Room of a Progressive Government."

This tax expert describes it as a "privilege" to have advised, "from a modest position," two governments that "have been benchmarks of progress" in Spain, and laments that a One of the main difficulties in developing progressive policies is "the animosity of a large part of the media." "Newspaper editors know very well how to focus on certain aspects of reality that, while not false, manage to distort the image presented," he maintains, referring to some publications that, a couple of years later, have made him their own headline. However, Martínez Sánchez does not agree with one of the Spanish president's moves related to his area of study. He has positioned himself against special funding for Catalonia. When the initial agreement between ERC and PSC came to light, he stated that it was "nonsense" and shared opinions that labeled it "opportunistic" and "negative" for equality.