The National Court will investigate the cash payments made by the PSOE to Ábalos and Koldo García

BarcelonaThe judge at the National Court presiding over the Koldo case, Ismael Moreno, has decided to open a separate investigation into the cash payments made by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) to former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos and his advisor Koldo García. This decision comes after the judge received a ruling from Supreme Court Justice Leopoldo Puente, requesting the National Court to investigate these payments. In the ruling sent to Moreno, Justice Puente stated that there were "unanswered questions" regarding the cash payments to the PSOE headquarters, including suspicions of potential irregular financing and possible money laundering. The PSOE has consistently maintained that the cash payments were for the settlement of justified expenses, a claim the National Court will now have to investigate. In Thursday's ruling, Moreno explains that the documentation sent by the Supreme Court, incorporated into the separate case it has opened, includes the report from the Civil Guard's Central Operational Unit (UCO) on Ábalos's assets, which analyzes the funds, as well as information provided by the PSOE itself regarding these assets. It also includes the statements made before the Supreme Court by the party's former manager, Mariano Moreno, Ferraz employee Celia Rodríguez, and businesswoman Carmen Pano, who claimed to have delivered 90,000 euros in cash at the PSOE headquarters. Once the decision was made public, the PP's Secretary General, Miguel Tellado, commented via X: "Now the Socialist leaders will have the opportunity to answer before a judge the question that Feijóo asked Sánchez in Congress," referring to whether the PSOE Secretary General could affirm that... Cuca Gamarra, the conservatives' deputy secretary for institutional regeneration, also spoke out, saying that "everything Sánchez doesn't know for sure is well-documented in the courts."