Supreme Court Judge Leopoldo Puente has issued an order in which he closes the investigation into the mask case and proposes trying former minister José Luis Ábalos, his former advisor Koldo García and businessman and commission agent Víctor de Aldama. The case that the Supreme Court judge has sent to trial is being pursued for the crimes of criminal organization, bribery, influence peddling and embezzlement.
This piece is different from the one that the magistrate continues to instruct about rigging in public works awards and in which Santos Cerdán, who replaced Ábalos in the Organization Secretariat of the PSOE and who has been in provisional prison for these events since June, is also being investigated.
The one baptized as 'operation Delorme', which gave rise to the instruction in the Supreme Court, began by investigating whether Koldo García, former advisor to José Luis Ábalos, collected commissions from million-dollar contracts for the sale of masks in exchange for connecting companies in the plot with public administrations. The progress of the investigation made it possible to discover that Ábalos himself received compensation for the awards to the companies involved. His arrest led to the case ending up in the Supreme Court.
One of the companies investigated in the case is Management Solutions and Business Support, which between 2020 and 2021 obtained a total of 12 public awards that are close to 53 million euros for the acquisition of medical supplies to face the pandemic: masks but also hypodermic needles and management services to facilitate the entry of everything into Spain. Some of these contracts were paid in part with European funds, which led Anti-Corruption to hand over its colleagues at the European Public Prosecutor's Office last summer.
The judge makes it clear that the investigation is based on the statements of the accused businessman Víctor de Aldama, who has made a series of accusations in court and in constant visits to the media from which indications of veracity have emerged, although in some cases there is no trace that they are true.
Judge Puente says: “It must be stated, from now on, that in relation to most of the justiciable facts that appear described in the previous ordinal, – with partial exception of those referred to in letters F and D – what was maintained throughout the investigation of this case by one of those investigated in it: Mr. Aldama Delgado has been taken into account.”
Puente highlights that Aldama's statements “are not at all self-exculpatory.” “Quite the contrary, Mr. de Aldama Delgado unequivocally accepts that he himself delivered the money, both the periodic amounts and the prizes related to specific contracts, to Mr. García Izaguirre for subsequent distribution with Mr. Ábalos Meco, assuming his own responsibility for the events.”
The judge adds that the statements have been “inditially corroborated by other results of the investigation” and that the asset reports made to Ábalos and Koldo García, detecting an increase in cash income in those investigated.
“Prior and privileged information”
The judge writes in his order: “Don Víctor Gonzalo de Aldama Delgado, taking advantage of the personal relationship that united him with Mr. José Luis Ábalos Meco and with Mr. Koldo García Izaguirre, could have obtained prior and privileged information about the needs derived from the emergency, which would have allowed him to articulate an offer – with the acquiescence of both and the commitment that the contracts would be awarded to him – to ensure the perfection of the supply contract in favor of the company whose interests he promoted, Management Solutions and Help for Businesses”.
There are eight mask contracts under suspicion. The largest amount was awarded by Puertos del Estado on March 21, 2020 for a value of 20 million. Six days later, on March 27, Adif signed another one worth 12.5 million. Both organizations depend on the Ministry of Transport that was then directed by José Luis Ábalos (PSOE). Barely a month later, the Secretary of State for Security of the Ministry of the Interior signed another one worth 3.5 million. In addition, the Canarian Health Service awarded another four for a total value of 12.3 million and the Balearic Islands awarded a final one of 3.7 million.
In total, a company with no experience in the healthcare market or previous contacts with Chinese manufacturers made profits of more than 16 million euros in just two months by supplying healthcare materials to different administrations. They were contracts awarded through the negotiated procedure without publicity and as a matter of urgency, a modality that the Government had approved in the face of the situation of extreme need imposed by the pandemic.
The judge's order reviews the entire investigation, including indications of bribery to the former Minister of Transport and Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, and his then advisor, Koldo García.
The judge mentions the dissemination of a press release about the rescue of Air Europa that, according to the judge, Ábalos “was able to promote” on behalf of Aldama. Ábalos would have been “supportive and expressed the progress of the efforts for Air Europa to obtain the corresponding public financing.”
The judge assures that Ábalos was able to obtain in exchange for the press release the “enjoyment of a vacation villa in Marbella for himself and his family for several days whose rent was, for that brief period, 8,900 euros.” However, it was Koldo García's wife (1,800 euros) and the advisor himself (8,000 euros) who paid for the stay. “The money used to make these payments would come from Mr. Aldama himself or from the company whose interests he represented and would have been given as a gratuity in exchange for the publication of said press release.”
Other Ábalos vacations also appear in the car. This is about the stay in a chalet in La Línea de la Concepción for which the former minister paid 7,500 euros, the equivalent of two monthly payments, in July and August, and which he used until November 2021. When the businessman from whom the money came, belonging to the hydrocarbons sector, did not obtain the license he was seeking, he demanded the outstanding rents and the lease contract was terminated by mutual agreement.
The judge assumes that Ábalos and Koldo managed to get the Finance Minister's chief of staff to meet with Aldama to defer the debt of one of their companies. That meeting, he adds, “effectively took place” and achieved the desired postponement.
The judge states, for example, that, “in order to guarantee Mr. Ábalos Meco the payment of illicit commissions that could arise from the efforts made in favor of the personal interests” of Aldama, he rented him an apartment for 30,000 euros per year that Ábalos never paid. The rental was with the right to a purchase for 750,000 euros, “much lower than the real market (price).” The magistrate recognizes that Ábalos never occupied the property.
Jobs for women around Ábalos
Aldama, the judge says, would have assumed “certain expenses” such as renting an apartment for a couple from Ábalos, Jessica Rodríguez. “These rents were paid from the beginning by a partner of Mr. Aldama by order of him (up to a total of 82,248.40 euros) and, after Mr. Aldama decided to put an end to said payments, in the last tranche of the rent the rents were paid by Koldo García.”
Jessica Rodríguez appears in another compensation. He accuses Ábalos of “displaying his influence as a minister” so that Rodríguez was hired in two public companies without the woman “having to pass any kind of relevant selection process” and that, to the knowledge of Ábalos and Koldo García, “she did not attend those jobs for a single day.”
The order also mentions the hiring of Claudia García Montes, a former Miss Asturias for those over 30, with whom Ábalos and Koldo “maintained some kind of previous personal relationship.” García Montes also did not go to work.
The magistrate adds that Aldama obtained mobility certificates for himself and his companies in exchange for benefits to Koldo García and José Luis Ábalos.
