By Emma Pinedo and David Latona<\/p>\n
MADRID, May 27 (Reuters) – Police were seeking documents at the headquarters of Spain’s ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) on Wednesday \u200cas part of an investigation into an alleged plot to destabilise judicial \u200cproceedings against the party or the government, the High Court said.<\/p>\n
The alleged offences include belonging to \u200ba criminal organisation, bribery, disclosure of secrets, inducement to give false testimony, false accusation, falsification of commercial documents, misconduct in public office, influence peddling and offences against state institutions.<\/p>\n
At a news conference in Rome after meeting Pope Leo, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro \u200cSanchez stressed that Wednesday’s request \u2060for documents did not constitute a police search, adding that the party was fully cooperating with the courts and had absolute \u2060respect for the judiciary.<\/p>\n
Investigating judge Santiago Pedraz ordered the request of various documents and electronic files from the party’s headquarters, the court said.<\/p>\n
A judicial request for information requires \u200bprior notice \u200band targets specific items, as distinct from \u200ban “entry and search” carried out \u200cwithout prior notice to gather all kinds of evidence.<\/p>\n
Pedraz’s investigation centres on former PSOE organisation secretary Santos Cerdan, along with other party officials, lawyers, a businessman and a police officer. It is the first time Cerdan has been named in this case. He has denied wrongdoing in another investigation.<\/p>\n
The party led by Sanchez has been \u200cdogged by a slew of corruption scandals, including \u200bvarious investigations into Sanchez’s key allies and family \u200bmembers.<\/p>\n
Sanchez said if new irregular \u200bbehaviour emerged, his party would deal with it with the \u200csame firmness as before.<\/p>\n
Last week, the High \u200bCourt said it \u200bwas investigating Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero – a former Socialist premier and close Sanchez ally – on suspicion of leading an influence-peddling and money-laundering network, dealing another \u200bblow to the leftist \u200ccoalition government.<\/p>\n
Zapatero denied any wrongdoing, and Sanchez on Wednesday reiterated his support \u200bfor his predecessor.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo and David Latona; Editing by \u200bAndrei Khalip, Andrew Cawthorne and Alison Williams)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Emma Pinedo and David Latona MADRID, May 27 (Reuters) – Police were seeking documents at the headquarters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15153,8379,3567,2106,13614,205,15152,15154,8376,17],"class_list":["post-30404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-commercial-documents","tag-criminal-organisation","tag-influence-peddling","tag-investigation","tag-jose-luis-rodriguez-zapatero","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-santiago-pedraz","tag-santos-cerdan","tag-socialist-party","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}