A hypothetical one per cent commission on the awards would exceed €5 million, information from a Supreme Court order dated 30 June 2025. Judge Leopoldo Puente described the percentage as a restrained, provisional estimate against the scale of similar cases when he ordered Santos Cerdán’s pre-trial detention. The figure was a benchmark for potential commissions, not a finding that more than €5 million had actually been paid.
The National Court is investigating up to 11 public works contracts awarded to Acciona Construcción, worth a combined €537.2 million. Six are the primary focus of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. The awards were made through Adif or the Dirección General de Carreteras, whose former heads Isabel Pardo de Vera and Javier Herrero are also under investigation. The files cover five railway contracts and six road contracts, awarded mainly between 2018 and 2021. Later UCO reporting put a broader estimated total at €637 million; both figures refer to awards under investigation, not adjudicated losses.
The inquiry concerns alleged manipulation of public tenders and suspected kickbacks for former PSOE officials, including Cerdán, former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García. The contracts were awarded while Ábalos led the Transport Ministry, though investigators are also examining earlier awards in light of Cerdán’s reported influence and links to company executives. A separate judicial case followed the Urda rail crash, where a judge ordered the seizure of any black boxes found on the trains, as described in an earlier rail report.
A Guardia Civil UCO report submitted to the Supreme Court on 12 June 2025 put the amount Cerdán allegedly managed for commissions at €620,000. It linked €550,000 to two Acciona awards in Murcia: construction of the underground section of the city’s rail network, valued at almost €159 million, and a section of the Murcia–Almería high-speed corridor between Pulpí and Vera, worth just over €121 million. Together, the contracts were worth roughly €280 million.
The report associated another €70,000 with the ground floor of a property, without linking it to a specific contract. Investigators also said recorded conversations indicated that the suspects expected a further €450,000 in connection with three Acciona awards. One was in Logroño; the others were in Seville and Sant Feliú de Llobregat. These payment figures were investigative allegations and remain separate from the Supreme Court judge’s provisional one per cent benchmark.
The investigation also examines Cerdán’s assets and those of his family between 2014 and July 2021. He held 45 per cent of Servinabar, a company linked to businessman Antxon Alonso that received public contracts in a temporary joint venture with Acciona Construcción. The UCO report and later material from the Intervención General del Estado are before National Court judge Ismael Moreno. The National Court proceedings continue to examine whether tender manipulation and alleged commissions connected the contracts to political figures and companies; no final finding of corporate guilt has been made against Acciona.
