• Courts The judge sees "relevant" evidence that the number three of the PSOE-A plotted the kidnapping of a councilor of Maracena to silence a complaint of corruption
  • Live Elections 28-M, live

The end of this electoral campaign is becoming for the PSOE in a real ordeal in which it chains scandals without pause that are eroding the socialist brand before an electoral appointment that goes beyond the election of mayors and regional presidents. The 28-M has become a duel between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a first round of the general elections and the Socialists are choking by force of scandals.

The lists of Bildu, plagued by ETA convicts – seven of them with blood crimes – put Pedro Sánchez in a breach for the pacts and assignments to this formation throughout the legislature and monopolized the start of the campaign. To this controversy is added the drip of information, revealed by EL MUNDO, about the contracts awarded by the Valencian president, Ximo Puig, to his brother, or the irregularities in the management of renewables in Aragon. And, already in the final stretch of the campaign, the police operations against the purchase of votes that have splashed the PSOE, above all, in Mojácar (Almería), but also in Murcia, with candidates involved and arrested.

As if that were not enough, in the absence of 48 hours for the elections to be held, a second bomb has exploded in Andalusia, the great municipal fiefdom of the Socialists, where the PP challenges its hegemony, with the secretary of Organization of the party there as the protagonist of a gruesome event in which a frustrated kidnapping and several urban files under suspicion are mixed.

A judge in Granada has asked the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) to investigate the number three of the Andalusian PSOE, Noel López, whom he considers an alleged instigator of the kidnapping of a councilor with the intention of silencing a case of urban corruption.

The kidnapping should serve to cover urban irregularities

In a car notified this Thursday to the parties and to which EL MUNDO has had access, the magistrate points out that there are "sufficiently relevant" indications that the Secretary of Organization of the Andalusian PSOE had an active participation in the planning of the kidnapping of the mayor Vanessa Romero. The kidnapper told the Civil Guard that the plan was hatched in a restaurant in Maracena, where they sit at the same table himself, who was the partner of the councilor, Berta Linares; his predecessor at the head of the Mayor's Office and number three of the Andalusian PSOE, the aforementioned Noel López, and the Councilor for Urban Planning, Antonio García Leyva, in turn vice president of the Diputación de Granada. It was Noel López who proposed to give "a scare" to Romero, with whom they maintained terrible relations and who, in addition, always had, according to his testimony, information from urban planning files that could cause them problems.

Also, according to what the kidnapper has testified, López encouraged him to be the one to execute the plan with the argument that he suffered from a mental illness (he has bipolar disorder) and "nothing was going to happen to him" and that, if the victim denounced, "they would put a lawyer on him."

Sánchez accuses the PP of "muddying" and Feijóo asks him not to hide

The number three of the Andalusian PSOE denied yesterday "categorically" any relationship with the facts under investigation and tried to discredit the evidence against him by ensuring that it is based on the testimony of a person "who is unbalanced".

Meanwhile, Moncloa and Ferraz try to limit and minimize the scandals by defining them as "concrete cases" and scarcely representative. It is the idea that you want to transfer. In the party there is division between those who do not show concern that it has a cost for the image of the PSOE because "it is a symptom that the system works", as Luis Tudanca, of Castilla y León, or those who point out in Madrid that "it does not have to affect" beyond in the affected municipalities themselves. "We are worried that it will happen, but it will not influence our votes," they say from the socialist engine room.

However, there is a sector of the party that shows concern that it can "demobilize", as they believe in the PSOE of Madrid, because it generates "disaffection" for the political class. Demobilization, they point out, "always hurts the left."

Pedro Sánchez yesterday framed the latest scandals affecting his party in an attempt by the PP to dirty the climate of 28-M: "It will not stop insulting and muddying the campaign." Feijóo, for his part, demanded explanations and that he act "immediately": "You can not hide."

The Government, meanwhile, is focused on conveying that the system and the law "work", that "if there is any irregular action, the State acts and acts effectively".

Cash that socialists could give to middlemen

GEMA PEÑALOSA

PSOE members arrested for their connection to the postal vote-buying scheme in Mojácar (Almería) were able to give cash to intermediaries to deliver to people willing to commit electoral fraud.

This is at least clear from the investigations with which a court of Vera, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard work. As this newspaper published yesterday, the price of suffrage ranged between 100 and 200 euros. The investigators are satisfied with what was seized in the more than ten searches carried out in Mojácar, since "they have abundant incriminating evidence".

Those arrested – the 'number two' of the list of local socialists, Francisco Bartolomé Flores, and the 'number five', Cristóbal Vizcaíno – spent Wednesday night in the dungeons along with five other detained people. The agents attribute to both the direction of the plot dedicated to capturing votes to the immigrant population of Mojácar focusing on unemployed people or with an agonizing economic situation. Among those arrested are several people from countries such as Ecuador and Nicaragua.

The corrupt network would not only have bought wills with money in the most depressed areas of Mojácar but also made promises of work in case the PSOE managed to unseat the PP from the municipal command in the electoral elections.

The elite body of the Civil Guard also seized census lists where the names of citizens were marked, postal vote receipts and technological material. These census copies could lead the Economic Crimes section of the UCO to clarify an approximate number of the total number of voters who have sold their votes.

Agents have already begun analyzing the material in depth. With the documentation and devices examined, they will clarify the degree of participation of the detainees in the electoral fraud scheme.

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  • Pedro Sanchez
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  • Bildu
  • Alberto Núñez Feijóo
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  • Articles Chema Rodríguez
  • Articles Raúl Piña
  • Articles Marta Belver

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