The spokesperson for the Popular Group in Congress, Ester Muñoz, lashed out this Tuesday at the PSOE for, in her opinion, having gone from assuring that they did not know who Leire Díez was to admitting that they paid her 45,000 euros. As she stressed, the Socialist Party "lies more than it talks."
Muñoz made these remarks after the PSOE admitted that it paid 44,859 euros to Leire Díez for work as a communication advisor for the party in Cantabria between 2015 and 2017, a figure much higher than the 15,612 euros it had already acknowledged before the judge of Plaza de Castilla who is investigating the former socialist militant for alleged crimes of influence peddling and bribery.
The PP leader criticized the successive rectifications of the Socialist Party regarding their relationship with Leire Díez, since, as she recalled, they first maintained that they did not know who she was and now admit that she was on their payroll also in 2015 and 2016, and not only in 2017.
"First: we don't know who this lady is, she has never been to Ferraz, she is a little Nicolás; Second: we only paid her 15,000 euros and only hired her in 2017; Third: well, okay, now we admit that we also paid her 45,000 euros and that we had her on payroll in 2015 and 2016," emphasized the popular spokesperson, enumerating the changes in version attributed to the PSOE.
The spokesperson for the 'popular' in the Lower House accused the socialists of "lying." "What's next? They lie more than they talk," she stated in a message published on "X" and reported by Europa Press.
The PSOE's written statement to the judge
According to a document to which Europa Press has had access, the PSOE has increased the amount paid to Leire Díez for her services as a communication advisor in Cantabria between 2015 and 2017 to almost 45,000 euros.
In said document, the party informs Judge Arturo Zamarriego that, after reviewing the accounts of the Cantabrian federation, it has verified that Díez not only worked as a technical communication advisor in 2017, as it had already admitted, but that she did so from 2015 and "as a dependent self-employed worker." It specifies that she provided services in Cantabria from September 1, 2015, to February 28, 2017, and subsequently, between March 1, 2017, and September 7 of that same year.
The PSOE had communicated in December to the Court of Instruction Number 9 of Madrid a total payment of 15,612 euros gross to the former militant for work carried out in 2017 in Cantabria, where she had been a councilor in the Vega de Pas City Council between 2011 and 2015 within the Socialist Municipal Group, as it stated then.