The forensic report commissioned by the PSOE from two professors at the Department of Public Law and Legal Philosophy of the Autonomous University of Madrid concludes that there is no evidence of illegal financing in the party. The analysis, prepared by Félix Alberto Vega Borrego and César Martínez Sánchez, examines the cash payments made between 2017 and 2024 as well as the cash balance in the till. Accordingly EFEthe document excludes the presence of black money or unknown economic movements, however, some “conspicuous” expenses are identified related to the organization’s secretariat headed by José Luis Ábalos.
Among these charges the report mentions a Meal for nine people celebrated in Valencia on Christmas Day 2019 and “extraordinary” payouts at the seafood restaurant La Chalana. These expenses represented between 4 and 25 percent, depending on the year, of the total 126,858 euros managed by the Ábalos department between 2017 and 2020. The analysis was carried out after the PSOE announcement in July in response to a judicial investigation involving both Ábalos and Santos Cerdán, the party’s last two organizational secretaries.
The report consulted by EFEDetails that most of the funds come from the PSOE bank account at BBVA and occasionally from operations identified as “sporadic and completely identified“, such as selling merchandising, scrap metal or winning a lottery. This atypical income totaled 7,283 euros and represents the 1 percent cash in total.
During the analyzed period, the PSOE provided the party treasury with 940,388 euros. Of this, 126,858 euros were allocated to the organizational secretariat by 2020. Ábalos received 19,637.97 euros until 2019, while Koldo García received 11,291.33 euros between 2017 and 2019. Santos Cerdán, for his part, received cash 7,433 euros between 2023 and 2024 with three settlements for values of 237.83; 374.2 and 186.55 euros.
The text emphasizes that the PSOE cash system is “coherent, closed and verifiable” as “all cash inputs have one.” Bank origin or respond to down payment adjustments and all expenses are correctly documented“In addition, for each payment, the recipient and the corresponding organic area are identified and no cash movements outside the regular treasury cycle are observed.”
The report details that the expenses incurred by the organizing secretariat during Ábalos’ leadership also include billing exceed 2,000 euros and integrate multiple receipts. Most of them are restaurants on the Madrid-Valencia axis, whose typical expenses do not exceed 60 euros per guest. However, there are exceptions such as three bills in a single day for which “the explanation is not obvious,” two receipts at La Chalana at 11:58 p.m. One day in January 2020, a menu for 332 euros in this restaurant and another for one hundred euros per person after a meal of crabs and oysters. In 2018, spending over 60 euros per guest accounted for 4 percent, a percentage that increased to 25 percent in 2020.
The report also points to expenses at a restaurant in La Massana (Andorra) and invoices for it Brussels and Brugesin Belgium, are considered “conspicuous” places. According to the analysis, there is “generally no specific way” how the payments were made or who the recipient was, although some receipts list the names of Ábalos or his advisor Koldo García. At one point the receipt appears in the name of Ábalos’ former mother-in-law.
The billing sheets kept by the party, They used to be called Ábalos and they had the consent of the person responsible for administration. In 2017, some receipts were signed by Francisco Salazar, then deputy secretary.
After receiving the report, the PSOE transmitted excludes the existence of illegal financingHowever, points out that the reconciliation of the expense and transport receipts with the agenda of the organizing secretariat is still pending. It is now up to, according to socialist sources, EFE, Determine whether the people examined used the PSOE to do this Allocate expenses that have nothing to do with your political activity and determine whether there was any type of fraud that could have harmed the party.
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