The investigators of the Koldo case are not able to calibrate, at the moment, how far the tentacles of the commission plot involving who was the right-hand man of ex-minister José Luis Ábalos can reach. Sources close to the investigations warn that the investigation is still in its infancy – but with enough solid evidence to make the arrests last week – so they do not rule out another set of charges now that the devices and documents are being analyzed confiscated during searches. To this, we should add a key piece of the framework: businessman Juan Carlos Cueto, who has not yet been arrested.
Cueto is an old acquaintance in the country’s police and judicial archives. What the agents of the central operative unit of the Civil Guard now place as the alleged mastermind of the plot is awaiting trial for his alleged involvement in the Defex case, the biggest corruption scandal for the sale of arms in Angola. The businessman was abroad when the arrests were made last week. Sources close to the investigation say that he did not run away, but that he is located. The same sources rule out that Cueto could have destroyed evidence in recent days.
Cueto, who would have been the person who put the Soluciones de Gestión company in the hands of the plot, will be brought before the court in the coming days, according to legal sources. This company was awarded the investigated contracts for a total of 54 million euros. The Anticorruption Prosecutor gathered the indications that Cueto controlled the company, despite the fact that his name did not appear on the corporate bodies of the family group’s businesses. “His participation in the business activity would not have ceased”, according to the complaint presented by the public ministry.
In other words, he maintained power through relatives or employees. Because of this, investigators believe that Cueto is a key piece to continue to pull to elucidate the true scope of the plot. Once they give as evidence the “direct and close relationship” between Koldo and Cueto, for whom the Prosecutor’s Office is asking for 50 years in prison for the Defex case.
But not only Cueto’s statement is vital for the progress of the investigations. “The investigation is very active”, corroborate fiscal sources. The proof is that when Anticorruption presented the complaint to the National Court – in September of last year – it only showed seven names under its suspicions. However, as a result of the investigations that have been carried out in recent months in the central court of inquiry 2 of the National Court, around twenty arrests were finally ordered.
Among these seven, in addition to the ex-advisor of Ábalos and the businessman Cueto, there is the wife of Koldo García, Patricia Uriz, who was arrested and released shortly after, and the sub-lieutenant of the Civil Guard José Luis Rodriguez Garcia None of the two defendants have yet gone before judge Ismael Moreno.
In addition to these pending declarations – if they do not comply with the right not to declare -, other lines of investigation may emerge from the huge telephone interventions that have been carried out during the months that the cause has been kept secret from summary In one, as recorded in one of Moreno’s interviews, two businessmen talk about “a favor” that Koldo García and his “former boss” would have asked him, without specifying who it was.
“It’s a favor that your neighbor (Koldo) asked…, he and his ex-boss…, and it seems that the other one said yes…, because they gave him another favor in return” , says the message.
The interlocutory order, issued on Friday when the cause was still secret, did not give more context. Nevertheless, the investigating judge mentions this message to show how the investigated spoke “about other participants in the events”.
