Spanish police entered the ruling Socialists’ Madrid headquarters on Friday as part of a corruption probe into a former senior party official that has rocked Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government.
A police report released last week implicated Socialist heavyweight Santos Cerdán and ex-transport minister Jose Luis Ábalos in receiving kickbacks in the improper awarding of public contracts.
In a ruling issued on Friday, a Supreme Court judge ordered the Civil Guard to clone the contents of Cerdán’s work email account at the Socialist headquarters.
The judge also requested information on Cerdán’s bank accounts and wealth, summoning him to testify on June 30th, and instructed officers to clone Ábalos’s email account at the transport ministry.
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The images of police entering Socialist headquarters are damaging for an administration that came to power in 2018 promising to clean up Spanish politics after the rival conservative Popular Party (PP) was convicted in its own graft affair.
Cerdán has relinquished his powerful post as Socialist organisation secretary and as an MP. The party has definitively expelled Ábalos.
READ ALSO: ‘Untenable’ – Spain’s PM fights for his job as corruption scandal grows
The scandal has shaken the minority coalition with far-left formation Sumar and relations with an array of leftist and regional separatist parties the government depends on to pass legislation.
Legal investigations are also underway against Sánchez’s wife, brother and Socialist-appointed top prosecutor.
But the Socialist premier, one of Europe’s longest-serving leftist leaders, has rebuffed demands from the PP and far-right party Vox to resign and call early elections.
