Anabel Mateos, recently appointed as the first Deputy Secretary for Organisation of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), had a property she owns raided by customs authorities in January, it was revealed.
During the operation, an illegal tobacco workshop was discovered on the premises, and her father was arrested at the scene.
Anabel Mateos was the right-hand woman of Rebeca Torró, who is replacing Santos Cerdán, now in custody on charges of alleged bribery and influence peddling.
Mateos was appointed together with Second Deputy Francisco Salazar, who resigned from his position on July 6 after internal allegations of inappropriate behaviour, sexual harassment and abuse of power surfaced.
During the raid on January 23, 2025, the police seized 2,400 kilograms of chopped tobacco and 360 packs of contraband of various brands from what appeared to be a clandestine tobacco manufacturing workshop, news outlet El Debate reported on July 8.
The house, property of Mateos’ family, was located in Roquetas de Mar in the province of Almeria.
Her father was arrested and was currently under judicial investigation for alleged smuggling and crimes against public health.
The customs operation concluded a six-month investigation into a large-scale alleged illegal tobacco production and distribution network.
It began when Customs Surveillance officers noticed suspicious activity in the garage of a duplex in Roquetas de Mar and obtained a court warrant. The property was allegedly being used as a covert workshop to process raw tobacco, produce cigarettes and package them without any fiscal or health oversight.
During the search, officers found Mateos’ father on the premises and uncovered a fully equipped allegedly illicit workshop. It contained tobacco leaf grinders, cigarette tubing machines, and packaging materials, many bearing counterfeit versions of commercial brand logos, officers said.
According to the official valuation, the seized goods were worth €384,000, far exceeding the €15,000 threshold at which smuggling becomes a criminal offence under Spanish law.
Investigators considered the arrested person, Mateos’ father, as allegedly being in charge of distributing the products.
A turning point in the investigation came in December last year, when officials intercepted a vehicle driven by him transporting 1,200 kilograms of raw tobacco leaf purchased in Cartagena, Murcia. This discovery proved crucial in securing the court order for the subsequent raid.
Anabel Mateos is the wife of Antonio Hernando, Secretary of State for Telecommunications since September 2024, making her a key player the PSOE under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Hernando was a co-founder of the consulting firm Acento, led by former Socialist minister José Blanco, and left the firm in November 2023 when he entered politics.
Blanco employed Anabel Mateos, though, as a senior consultant with the firm among whose clients was Chinese telecom giant Huawei.
A leaked arrest warrant from the Belgian investigation into the latest European Parliament alleged corruption scandal showed MEPs were suspected of having accepted tens of thousands of euros in kickbacks to support Chinese interests. https://t.co/ePE42FBFbT
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News outlet EL ESPAÑOL reported on June 20 last year that Blanco had eight meetings with Koldo García, an adviser to José Luis Ábalos at the Ministry of Transport.
García was central to the major alleged corruption case currently being probed by the Supreme Court. Following that report, Mateos’ photo was removed from Acento’s website.
Mateos also worked at Zaño, the consultancy firm of Gaspar Zarrías who was convicted in the ERE corruption case, where political corruption diverted at least €679 million to companies, workers and trade unions related to the PSOE, Spain’s largest corruption case to date.
Zaño also hired Leire Díez, known as the PSOE “plumber”, who reportedly sought to discredit police investigators, judges, and prosecutors investigating the party’s alleged corruption, an accusation Díez has strongly denied.
News outlet The Objective reported on June 25 that Hernando attended a meeting with Díez regarding the alleged smear campaign.
Jacobo Teijelo, the lawyer who accompanied Díez in her meetings with the businessmen under investigation for alleged corruption in the Koldo-case, has already visited Santos Cerdán twice in prison.
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— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) June 27, 2025
