MADRID, Spain – The judge who prosecuted Pedro Sánchez’s brother told a court on Thursday that she confirmed with two lawyers close to the Los Rochos drug clan that a former judge linked to the PSOE’s dirty operations had contacted the criminal organisation to attack her: first to file lawsuits or complaints against her and later, directly, to get her out of the way.
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According to sources present at her statement, investigating judge Beatriz Biedma also told the National High Court that throughout the investigation into the David Sánchez case she always felt she was being followed. In her appearance before magistrate Santiago Pedraz, Biedma gave several examples, saying she had arrived at her daughter’s school and been told that her brother had just been there when she has no brother, or been at a place she frequents daily and been told her secretary had been there when she has no secretary, adding that she knows people have been asking questions but cannot say who.
The first time Biedma was informed of the contacts between former judge Sáenz de Tejada, allegedly linked to the dirty operations coordinated by Leire Díez, and the Los Rochos clan was through one of the lawyers of the organisation’s leader, Cintia Rocho. She explained in court that in December 2024 a man named Jesús Rocho was killed while she was on duty, and that as she opened that proceeding Cintia Rocho appeared as an injured daughter, with one of her lawyers telling her in the court corridors in January or February 2025 whether she knew that Sáenz de Tejada had contacted Cintia Rocho.
According to her account, this surprised her greatly, as Biedma had sent Cintia Rocho’s father, brother and husband to prison, the latter killed in front of her in a cafe, leading her to wonder how anyone could think of contacting her. The matter stayed there until July this year, when the first journalistic reports emerged about the alleged PSOE dirty operations network approaching the Badajoz drug-trafficking clan, at which point Biedma decided to contact Cintia Rocho’s lawyers to ask them to confirm the veracity of the published reports. They spoke with her and confirmed that Sáenz de Tejada had contacted her, first to file lawsuits or complaints against Biedma and later, directly, to get her out of the way, the magistrate said.
Later, lawyer Juan José Collado, also questioned by the Civil Guard’s Central Operational Unit, went to her office to convey that he had sensitive information about the alleged PSOE dirty operations, telling her he had learned that Sáenz de Tejada had contacted the clan’s leader and even that he himself had been present at a meeting with the former judge linked to the network. Biedma said she asked him how anyone could be in a meeting with a man proposing such a thing and not report it, with Collado later confirming that he had personally witnessed videos showing Biedma having breakfast and others of her daughters in a park.
In her testimony before the UCO, Rocho confirmed that former judge José Luis Sáenz de Tejada told her by phone that Beatriz Biedma had to be eliminated. In the conclusions of its report, the Civil Guard notes that the alleged dirty operations used the former magistrate Sáenz de Tejada to influence this judicial case, adding that according to Cintia Rocho’s statements, Tejada had even proposed carrying out a physical action against judge Biedma. The UCO has also established through the interrogation of the charged businessman Joaquín Parra that the former judge organised surveillance of the Badajoz magistrate.
The brief UCO report links various points ranging from Leire Díez’s diary to Sáenz de Tejada’s conversations with Cintia Rocho. In Leire Díez’s handwritten diaries seized by the UCO is an entry corresponding to March 2025 reading: Judge Badajoz. La Celsa. Heroin and gypsy. The UCO questioned Cintia Rocho after she appeared on a television programme, with the alleged drug trafficker stating in her testimony that La Celsa is her and that heroin and gypsy refer to a man convicted of drug trafficking named Ángel Martín Carrillo, something also corroborated by Carrillo’s own lawyer, Juan José Collado, likewise questioned by the UCO.
Alongside Díez’s handwritten notes, the UCO has analysed those from the phone of one of her partners, businessman Javier Pérez-Dolset, who in September 2024 wrote down the name Luis Sáenz de Tejada alongside the words: Destroy the brother’s proceeding. These and other indications, including Joaquín Parra’s statement, allow the UCO to build a chronology of the strategy the alleged dirty operations followed to try to bring down the Sánchez brother’s case, without any success as he ended up convicted by the Provincial Court of Badajoz.
First, Pérez-Dolset contacted Parra, proposed meeting Leire Díez, a person close to the government, and asked whether he knew Sáenz de Tejada, with Dolset aware of the former magistrate’s existence because he runs a YouTube channel full of videos denouncing judicial corruption in Badajoz. Parra confirmed he knew him during several meetings at Pérez-Dolset’s house in Tarifa, leading Díez’s partner to note in his diary: The brother’s judge, crook without equal. Luis Sáenz de Tejada has all the info. Contacts followed and on 23 August 2024 Díez, Dolset, Parra and the former magistrate formed a WhatsApp group called Holidays and Travel.
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The four later met at a property on Calle Diego de León that Díez and Dolset described as the PSOE’s safe house, where Sáenz de Tejada proposed judicial strategies to truncate David Sánchez’s case. Neither in that nor any other conversation witnessed by Joaquín Parra was there talk of threatening or assaulting Biedma, according to his own account to the UCO. The alleged drug trafficker’s contact with the former magistrate arose precisely when she was encouraged to comment on one of his Facebook posts, as happened with the convicted Ángel Martín. Following Rocho’s first comment, Sáenz de Tejada privately told her about the existence of a judicial mafia in Badajoz. Finally, the former judge called Rocho and told her that Biedma was a pain in the arse and had to be eliminated. According to the statement she gave to the Civil Guard, the alleged drug trafficker was struck by Sáenz de Tejada telling her, in reference to Biedma, that the donkey learns by beating, with Cintia Rocho understanding that they wanted to cause Biedma physical harm, as the UCO records in its transcript of the witness’s statement.
