Raids, indictments and jewelry: Corruption cases close in on Spain’s prime minister

(CN) — Police raided the Madrid headquarters of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s ruling Socialists party Wednesday, thrusting one of Europe’s most prominent progressive leaders deeper into corruption scandals closing in on the heart of his government.

Besides searching the party’s national office, police carried out searches at homes and announced new corruption charges. Police are probing illegal party financing, influence peddling and other crimes.

Wednesday’s raids followed the May 19 indictment of former Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a political mentor and close ally of Sánchez’s. Zapatero became the first former prime minister to face criminal charges since the restoration of democracy in Spain in 1975.

A National Court judge charged Zapatero with money laundering, influence peddling and other crimes in connection with the 2021 bailout of air carrier Plus Ultra.

Sánchez was prime minister at the time of the 53 million-euro ($61 million) coronavirus pandemic bailout. In December, police arrested the company’s president and its chief executive on charges of laundering money linked to Venezuela. The airline flies mostly between Spain and Latin America.

On May 19, police raided Zapatero’s Madrid office and seized documents and luxury jewelry, including diamond-encrusted necklaces, large gemstones, luxury watches, and gold chains, bracelets, rings and earrings, Spanish media reported. His office is located close to the Socialist party headquarters.

Besides Zapatero, Sánchez’s wife, brother and former top party members have been wrapped up in corruption cases. Last November, his former attorney general Álvaro Garcia Ortiz was convicted of leaking confidential legal information against the conservative opposition.

This was the second raid on the Socialists’ Madrid offices in the past year.

Last June, anti-corruption agents searched the headquarters following the bribery indictment of Santos Cerdán, who had served as Sánchez’s longtime adviser and third-ranking Socialist member. Cerdán was hit with fresh charges Wednesday and his home was searched. He faces trial on charges of receiving commission payments by companies in exchange for awarding public contracts.

Prosecutors have not named Sánchez as a suspect, but in recent trial testimony a businessman accused Sánchez of leading a scheme to rig contracts and siphon money into party coffers. The businessman, Victor de Aldama, is cooperating with investigators.

“Every single day we wake up with a new scandal,” said Fernando Casal Bértoa, a political scientist at the University of Nottingham, in a telephone interview.

Duncan Wheeler, an expert on Spanish politics at the University of Leeds, said government corruption was nothing new in Spanish political life.

“There hasn’t been any leader of the post-Franco Spanish democracy who hasn’t faced accusations of corruption and influence peddling,” he said in an email.

But he said Spaniards have become much less tolerant toward corruption.

The graft cases have weighed heavily on the center-left Socialists and boosted their right-wing opponents — the center-right Popular Party and far-right Vox. These right-wing parties have won a string of recent regional elections while the Socialists have suffered major losses.

Since Zapatero’s indictment, Sánchez’s fragile minority government has faced even more pressure with the conservative opposition calling for new elections.

“How many more raids, how many more commissions, how many more bribes, how much more money in bags, how much jewelry, how many more investigations?” Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the Popular Party, told journalists Wednesday.

He called on a collection of smaller left-wing and regional Basque and Catalan parties to stop supporting the Sánchez government, which he said “stinks.”

Casal Bértoa doubted Sánchez would step down.

“In normal circumstances, he would just resign and call for new elections,” he said. “But Sánchez is a survival animal.”

He added that Basque and Catalan parties would be wary of bringing down Sánchez because the Popular Party and Vox are opposed to giving more autonomy to regions.

“They are not going to support someone who is going to be tougher on what they want,” he said.

In the last parliamentary elections in 2023, the right wing came up short of winning a majority and Sánchez made concessions to regional nationalist parties to stay in power.

Casal Bértoa said Sánchez risked causing serious damage to the Socialists, especially if investigators discover links between top government officials and Zapatero and the bailout of Plus Ultra.

“A lot of the things that are imputed to Zapatero could not be done without the consent of the government,” Casal Bértoa said. “So, it’s not only going to affect Zapatero, it is going to affect many ministers within the government.”

On Wednesday, during a visit to the Vatican in Rome, Sánchez held his first news conference since Zapatero’s indictment.

He expressed support for Zapatero and defended his government, saying it had brought economic stability to Spain. He also dismissed calls for snap elections. Spain is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections by August 2027.

Sánchez said he would cooperate with investigators and rejected accusations of illegal party financing.

On Wednesday, an investigating judge charged Ana Fuentes, a Socialist Party manager, on suspicion of setting up a payment system to discredit judges, prosecutors and anticorruption agents.

“She is a woman who has meticulously managed the Socialist Party’s finances,” he said of Fuentes.

He said there was “a lot of speculation” about “irregular financing,” but added he would “act decisively” if evidence supporting those accusations came to light. Sánchez and his allies have accused the Spanish judiciary of right-wing bias in launching probes against the Socialists and their left-wing allies.

Still, there is growing unease among those supporting Sánchez.

On Sunday, Aitor Esteban, the head of the Basque Nationalist Party, urged Sánchez to call snap elections before the end of the year.

“There are already nine open cases, now Zapatero,” he said, as reported by Politico. “It would be irresponsible to continue beyond 2026 without direction, without a budget, without a stable majority, and with an agenda that is out of control and plagued by court cases.”

Wheeler said the mounting graft accusations are undermining Sánchez’s image as a corruption fighter.

“There is an issue of double standards for Sánchez because his legitimacy as president was based in no small measure on making Spain and Spanish politics more transparent,” he said.

Still, he said Sánchez had “been written off many times” before and he expected him to survive until the next election because there aren’t “many plausible alternatives.”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau