The former PSOE manager builds a firewall with the "chorizos" from the Koldo case

MadridOne of the questions that the eighth day of the trial in the Ábalos case has tried to resolve is where the cash that José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García had came from. During the investigation, the Civil Guard detected more than 95,000 euros from the former Minister of Transport and former number three of the PSOE without bank tracking. And this reinforced the thesis of "the existence of undeclared cash income" and triggered the opening of a separate proceeding in the National Court on the financing of the PSOE. The investigating judge raised the hypothesis that the PSOE helped Ábalos or Koldo to "launder" money. This Wednesday, in the Supreme Court, two lines of action have become evident during the testimony of Mariano Moreno, who was the party's manager between 2017 and 2021. First, he assured that Ferraz "never" handed over 100, 200, and 500 euro bills, which are the ones the Civil Guard suspects Koldo and his entourage managed – with code names –. Later, the lawyer for Ábalos's former advisor, with the intention of proving that all the money he received was "of legal origin", wanted to highlight possible errors in the documentation that the socialists sent to the courts.

All the money that the PSOE paid to compensate for expenses that had been advanced came from the party's "operating account." "There is no other source of income," stated Mariano Moreno, who detailed that the majority – 99.4% – was done through transfers and only a minority was in cash. He recounted that he requested the amount from the bank and they sent him the money through a security company: "We never asked for 500 euro bills, nor 200 euro bills, nor 100 euro bills, never. Those bills that could have been given by the PSOE do not exist," he emphasized. The interest in these amounts is that the Civil Guard believes that Koldo García and his ex-wife, Patricia Úriz, used an "agreed language" to refer to cash "of unknown origin." The 500 euro bills were chistorras, the 200 euro bills were soles and the 100 euro bills were lechugas.

We are talking about the expenses that the party paid to its workers and organic officials for items such as food, travel, tolls, or gasoline, which they initially paid and were later to be reimbursed. "Absolutely all settlements were accompanied by their justifications and receipts," made clear Mariano Moreno, who stressed that Ferraz did a "review" of all the tickets and checked that "they corresponded to the activities that were said to have been paid." At one point during the interrogation, he said that Ábalos was one of the PSOE leaders with "the most activity" and explained that he himself "authorized" his own expenses and those charged to his team. He also admitted, with a hushed tone, that party salaries are low: "The payrolls were not like in other places either."

"Koldo's money was of legal origin"

The most tense interpellation was from Leticia de la Hoz, Koldo García's lawyer, with incisive questions about PSOE's controls, attempting to discredit the "categorical" answers the witness had given, and with constant interruptions from the tribunal's president, Andrés Martínez Arrieta. "Can there be missing expense settlement sheets for Koldo García, that they overlooked or was it an oversight?", the lawyer asked.

She provided the Supreme Court with nine settlement sheets that were not included in the documentation sent by the PSOE and which she has now exhibited with difficulty because they were poorly scanned. And she wanted to prove that the money Koldo received "was of legal origin" and that he "could handle cash concerning various people." That is, to be the "recipient of this cash" and then distribute it. Mariano Moreno first affirmed it "with his head." And later, after a long back and forth with misunderstandings on both sides of the stage, he said that whoever signed the document was the one who received the money.

This point was emphasized by the subsequent witness: Celia Rodríguez, an employee of the PSOE's Organization Secretariat. She indicated that "normally" it was Koldo who went to pick up the cash that was intended for Ábalos. And sometimes Patricia Úriz even went.