Spain • 🌿 Progressive

Civil Guard investigators faced internal disciplinary files for probing PSOE-linked cases

Civil Guard investigators faced internal disciplinary files for probing PSOE-linked cases

Anti-Corruption prosecutors allege that three UCO investigators faced internally-opened disciplinary proceedings timed to coincide with contacts between Civil…

Police officers and commanders from Spain's Central Operative Unit (UCO) who were investigating cases connected to the ruling Socialist party found disciplinary proceedings opened against them — not by adversaries, but by their own chain of command, according to El Mundo. That is the core allegation driving a judicial investigation that has now formally reached the top of the Civil Guard. 🔹 What happened: Anti-Corruption prosecutors allege that Leire Díez, operating under instructions from Santos Cerdán — the PSOE's former organizational secretary — coordinated with Civil Guard director general Mercedes González to pressure the UCO. The mechanism, according to prosecutors, involved gathering damaging information, complaints, or disciplinary files against investigators to neutralize their work. Three formal disciplinary proceedings against UCO agents or commanders were opened in timeframes that prosecutors say align with González's contacts with Díez. In late May, UCO officers physically retrieved those files from Civil Guard headquarters; the resulting report triggered witness interviews and ultimately the formal summons of González and operational chief Manuel Llamas to appear on July 16, facing malfeasance and obstruction charges. 🔹 Why it matters: For the officers targeted, the disciplinary proceedings were not abstract legal maneuvers — they were threats to careers built on legitimate investigative work. Former Andalusian minister Gaspar Zarrías, implicated in the ERE corruption scandal, allegedly supplied data on UCO agents who had worked that case, which prosecutors present as an early operational example of the network's reach. González, a former Socialist MP and former government delegate in Madrid, refused to step down and called the case a campaign against her. If the judicial hypothesis holds, public servants conducting lawful investigations were subjected to institutional retaliation coordinated at the highest level of their organization. 📌 EPM Take: Zarrías handing over UCO agent data is the detail that transforms this from a political scandal into something with a documented operational chain. That alleged transfer connected the ERE investigation — Spain's largest regional corruption case — directly to a structure that prosecutors say was still active in 2021. For the agents involved, the stakes were personal: disciplinary files can stall promotions, trigger reassignments, and cast professional doubt regardless of their outcome. EPM has reported on workers in other sectors — construction, healthcare — facing inadequate institutional protection; here the pattern repeats inside the security forces themselves. The scenario nobody is naming openly: if Llamas received "political pressure" as prosecutors allege, who else in the command structure knew and chose silence over accountability? ✍️ EPM Editorial Desk | erickprometeomedia.com
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