Magistrate Santiago Pedraz of Spain's High Court has ordered police to reclone the mobile phone of Juan Manuel Serrano Quintana, former chief of staff to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, judicial sources said.
The decision by the Central Instruction Court Number 5 judge came after rejecting legal challenges from Serrano, who also previously served as president of the state postal operator Correos.
Serrano had asked the magistrate to return his mobile phone and invalidate an initial extraction carried out by the Guardia Civil Central Operative Unit without his legal team present.
Alternatively, Serrano requested a formal court hearing to assess whether taking data from his device was proportionate to the judicial inquiry into alleged socialist party corruption, known as the PSOE sewers case.
The Spanish High Court, known locally as the Audiencia Nacional, is a specialized national tribunal based in Madrid that investigates complex financial crimes, public corruption, and terrorism cases.
Court Procedure and Technical Safeguards
Following the court order on Tuesday, specialized phone cloning software operated inside a sealed judicial chamber at the High Court under the supervision of the Legal Secretary of the Administration of Justice.
The technical process ran for eight to nine hours to generate a complete digital duplicate of all data stored on the handset.
Serrano is required to return to court headquarters on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., accompanied by his defense attorney, criminal lawyer Bernardo del Rosal, for the formal extraction of the copy.
Officers from the Central Operative Unit, the specialized central investigative arm of the Guardia Civil police force, will analyze the phone data before submitting a mandatory police report to the magistrate.
A secondary digital copy of the device contents will remain stored in court custody, secured by digital fingerprinting and administrative procedures designed to prevent any future tampering with the evidence.
Judge Rules Phone Extraction Procedure Valid
Magistrate Pedraz summoned Serrano to resolve what investigators described as an accidental technical error during the initial mobile phone extraction following his formal indictment in July.
Although the magistrate had specified in his original ruling that the phone cloning should occur with both Serrano and his lawyer present, officers conducted the initial extraction in their absence.
In a recent court order, Pedraz backed the judicial police unit, ruling that the incident was an involuntary oversight that did not invalidate the evidence gathered in the case.
The judge noted that Spanish procedural law does not strictly mandate the physical presence of a suspect or their legal representative during electronic device cloning.
Pedraz explained that he had included the requirement in his original order solely to offer higher procedural guarantees during the execution of the search warrant.
Because officers performed only a raw data extraction without opening, viewing, or modifying any stored files, the magistrate concluded that the device content remained untampered.
The judge added that receiving an unquestioned duplicate at court allowed for verification of the identification number and cloning process, ruling out chain of custody breaches that could void the investigation.
Pedraz emphasized that the police unit immediately provided the full copy to the court upon discovering their error, allowing the magistrate to accept the data or order a new extraction.
Scope of the Socialist Party Corruption Investigation
The judicial probe is examining Serrano's alleged involvement in a covert network designed to destabilize judicial and police investigations affecting the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, the government, and the family of Pedro Sánchez.
The ruling party, known as the PSOE, maintains its national headquarters on Ferraz Street in Madrid, where Serrano previously coordinated political operations as head of the leader's private cabinet.
Investigators are also scrutinizing alleged contract rigging involving public tenders connected to the State Holding Company for Industrial Participations, a state agency known as SEPI that oversees state enterprise holdings.
According to Guardia Civil reports, state postal operator Correos diverted more than 17,500 euros in public funds during Serrano's presidency in 2021 to Seville law firm SDEP & Carrillo.
Police allege the funds were routed through the law firm to channel covert payments to individuals involved in the illegal network.
Serrano is also accused of using his position to secure a political appointment at Correos for former socialist activist Leire Díez, as well as attempting to manipulate financial aid allocations from the Productive Industrial Investment Support Fund.
Magistrate Pedraz formally named Serrano as an official suspect after investigators attributed to him a preeminent role in securing business advantages within the SEPI state holding sphere and orchestrating maneuvers to defend party and government figures.
Encrypted Messages and Network Connections
Police investigators consider the contents of Serrano's mobile phone to be of critical importance after uncovering extensive evidence of communication with other key suspects under judicial investigation.
Analysis by the Central Operative Unit identified 9,355 WhatsApp messages exchanged between Serrano and former socialist activist Leire Díez between 2020 and 2024.
WhatsApp is a widely used encrypted messaging service owned by Meta that allows users to send text messages, voice notes, and media files.
Investigators also discovered 1,487 messages sent between Serrano and Díez up to November 2025 using Signal, an ultra-secure messaging application known for end-to-end encryption.
Police reports state that Díez, described by investigators as a party operative, discussed multiple business dealings with Serrano that fell completely outside his official responsibilities at the state postal service.
Officers noted that these secret communications mirrored management methods used by an alleged criminal outfit operating under the name Hirurok, a term meaning the three of us in the Basque language.
The Hirurok group allegedly comprised Leire Díez, former SEPI president Vicente Fernández Guerrero, and businessman Antxon Alonso, a partner of Santos Cerdán in Navarre construction firm Servinabar, which is separately implicated in public works rigging under the Koldo case.
