Leire Díez has multiplied her offensive in the new line of investigation launched against her in the National Court. The defense of the former socialist militant has presented several appeals to try to annul and block this part of the procedure, since it denounces that this court has violated legality by opening a “parallel” case for the “same facts” for which it was already in an ordinary court in Madrid. According to his lawyer, the National Court has “secretly” “appropriated” the investigations, “thus violating” the right of defense and the principle not the same thing twice (“not being investigated twice for the same thing”).
Magistrate Arturo Zamarriego, responsible for the Investigative Court number 9 of Madrid, for his alleged maneuvers against the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which . However, months later, in December 2025, the National Court opened another case against the former PSOE militant for setting up a network to collect alleged illegal commissions in exchange for influence from the Administration. A second summary, which finally fell to Judge Santiago Pedraz, was later secretly expanded to investigate the “plan” hatched to thwart judicial investigations that affected the party or the Executive.
At the beginning of this June, in addition to lifting the secrecy of the summary, Pedraz then addressed Judge Zamarriego to inform him that he considered that the National Court should assume all the investigations into Leire Díez and that, therefore, he should send him the actions that he had already carried out. A movement that the defense has appealed before Pedraz himself and before the Criminal Court. According to Leire Díez’s lawyer, this initiative must be revoked and the Pedraz court must be urged to “refrain from investigating, processing, acting and carrying out any type of diligence or investigative activity” linked to this new part of the case.
Eva Bejarano, lawyer for the former socialist militant, considers that “two exactly identical cases” have been created and that the National Court has launched “a parallel investigation” to that of Zamarriego, carrying out some “identical” and other “contradictory” investigations to those of the Madrid court. Along these lines, the appeal delves into the fact that Pedraz has now even accused people – such as Santos Cerdán, former secretary of the Socialist Organization – who testified for these events as witnesses before Zamarriego (that is, with the obligation to tell the truth and respond to all parties): “The accumulation of the causes would mean […] violate their most basic fundamental rights, such as not to declare,” he alleges.
“The principle of not the same thing twice for investigating the same facts twice, in parallel, and using actions (not casual findings) of one case to process and expand another,” insists Leire Díez’s lawyer, who defends that the only “truly valid” summary (and that should continue) is that of Zamarriego. In addition, the defense demands that all the material seized by the National Court on the suspects and that has served Pedraz to expand his investigations to the alleged maneuvers be annulled. concocted to try to stop legal cases that affected the PSOE and the Government.
This same Thursday, the lawyer has also sent another letter to the Zamarriego court to demand that it oppose the request to send her case to Pedraz: “This court was the first to initiate a case for the acts of bribery and influence peddling that are now intended to be absorbed. […] In this case, the jurisdiction of this court was legitimately set in July 2025, and the subsequent parallel investigation [de la Audiencia Nacional] “It cannot serve as a basis to displace it.”
