In 2019, at the very heart of Madrid, inside a building on Ferraz Street (Ferraz), a story unfolded that still raises questions for investigators and the public. During the peak of the election campaign, members of the PSOE headquarters were receiving large sums in cash, with no official employment records anywhere. €500 bills, which have long been a symbol of shadow transactions in Spain, were exchanged by hand with no paperwork whatsoever. The person managing these cash payouts was Koldo García Izaguirre, a close associate of then-minister José Luis Ábalos. All of this took place with the full knowledge and approval of the party manager, Mariano Moreno.
Investigators paid particular attention to the case of Eduardo Cantos, Ábalos’s driver. He received €2,000 in cash without any formal contract or enrollment in the social security system. The money was handed to him in four €500 bills, following personal authorization from the party manager. This incident was just the tip of the iceberg, revealing a much larger system of unrecorded payments.
Secret accounting
Internal documents and investigation materials point to a significant gap between the official accounting and the actual cash flows within the PSOE headquarters. Estimates suggest that over €29,800 was left out of the official books. Investigators refer to the existence of a so-called ‘caja B’—an off-the-books cash fund used for these payments.
The scheme was straightforward: Koldo would take cash from the Ferraz safe and distribute it to temporary workers hired for the election campaign. Officially, these people were not listed anywhere, and their names appeared in no official documents. Some payments were disguised as travel or transportation expenses, but the real recipients were never specified.
The entire system operated under the supervision of manager Mariano Moreno, who now serves as the head of the state-owned company Enusa. In court, he claimed that the party had never dealt in €500 bills, but case materials and witness testimonies suggest otherwise.
Key figures involved
At the center of these events were not only Koldo and the manager, but other staffers. Secretary Celia Rodríguez Alonso was responsible for holding the cash and distributing it on orders from leadership. In correspondence between Koldo and his ex-wife Patricia Úriz, they discussed details of handing money over to Ábalos’s driver. Their messages used code words and hints to conceal the true nature of these transactions.
Investigators note that none of these payments went through official channels. There were no bank transfers or payrolls—only cash, handed over personally by prior agreement with the leadership. The scheme relied entirely on trust and the silence of those involved.
The investigation is ongoing
The case involving undisclosed payments within the PSOE headquarters has become the subject of a separate investigation at the National Court. Judge Ismael Moreno is conducting a confidential inquiry, during which electronic storage devices containing data on cash transactions from 2017 to 2024 were seized. The Civil Guard’s central unit is analyzing these documents in an attempt to reconstruct a complete picture of what occurred.
Particular attention is being paid not only to payments made to the driver but also to other incidents that may indicate systemic violations. The case files contain dozens of messages discussing amounts, methods of delivery, and the need for approval from political leadership. In some instances, the direct involvement of the Secretary for Territorial Coordination, Santos Cerdán, is mentioned.
Double bookkeeping
Correspondence between those involved in the scheme clearly shows a division between ‘official’ and ‘shadow’ accounting. In one message, Koldo explicitly states that certain amounts should not appear in official reports. Investigators emphasize that this was not a matter of isolated mistakes but a deliberate effort to establish a parallel accounting system.
The total discrepancy between official and unofficial reporting amounted to nearly 30,000 euros. This figure is further increased by undocumented expenses uncovered during an internal audit, as well as separate payments that were not declared to any authority. The case involving Ábalos’s driver was just one among many, but it was this incident that exposed the entire scheme.
Unanswered questions
The cash payments at the PSOE headquarters during the 2019 election still spark intense debate in political circles. The investigation is ongoing, with new details surfacing regularly. How many similar incidents remain in the shadows is still unknown. One thing is clear: a system built on trust and silence inevitably breaks down, and when it does, the most unexpected details come to light.
