Koldo García, who was the most trusted person of the ex-Minister of Transport and ex-Secretary of Organization of the PSOE José Luis Ábalos, collected 3% of the mask contracts investigated in the Delorme operation. In three years he increased his assets by one and a half million euros. Who was the shadow of Ábalos, his advisor, driver and protector is now facing a judicial and political tsunami. The information that is becoming known from the investigation places both García and his ex-boss in a situation of still unpredictable consequences. The x that now needs to be clarified is whether the former number three of the socialists knew and allowed it. Ábalos has been very categorical in denying it.
So far, there is nothing from the investigation to indicate direct knowledge, except for some third-party references: “This was a favor that your neighbor [Koldo] and his ex-boss were asking, and it seems that the “another has said yes… because they have given him another favor in return”. This sentence, which alludes to Ábalos, comes from a recent conversation between two of those investigated in the plot.
This comment was made in December, when the main investigated, among them Koldo García, had their phones tapped until the moment of their arrest on Tuesday by order of the judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno. This comment also shows that the connection between them was not limited to specific contracts in 2020 as a response to the health emergency, but was perpetuated over time.
The investigations of the central operative unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Anti-corruption Prosecutor clearly outline what the plot would have consisted of. Since he arrived at the Ministry of Transport with Ábalos, Koldo García gradually acquired more power and became a councilor of Renfe and a member of the Governing Council of the Public Ports Authority of the State. These positions, in addition to the close relationship with the minister, allowed him to meet businessman Víctor de Aldama, president of Zamora CF, precisely on an official trip to Mexico in December 2018.
They met and started a relationship. According to the account contained both in the complaint filed by the Prosecutor’s Office and in the court hearings to which La Vanguardia has had access, when the pandemic arrived they joined together to give the pelotazo. García would have warned Aldama that contracts would be issued without competition in the midst of a health emergency for the purchase of health equipment. The businessman, who did not have the capacity to manage it, appointed another person with whom he had already done other business together, Juan Carlos Cueto, an old acquaintance of the judiciary, still pending a trial for bribery in the Defex case . Cueto contributed a company, Soluciones de Gestión, which went from 0 to 54 million euros in revenue in 2020.
Investigators suspect Koldo tipped off the contracts to be advertised days in advance. Various e-mails and various documentation show that they had already started contracting for the purchase of masks and their transport before the offers were made public. On the same day of publication, the contract was already awarded to this company. Cueto kept 35% of the public funds; Aldama, with 20%, and García, with 3%.
According to the investigation, Cueto and Aldama used a portion to invest in a slate business. Another part ended up in shell companies abroad: 508,000 euros, in an account in Brazil, and 1.6 million, in another in Luxembourg.
Koldo was more rudimentary. He moved around with 500 euro notes and deposited during those years up to 350,000 in cash into his or his wife’s accounts, and more than 200,000 through his brother, Joseba, who was also investigated. The money from these accounts was moved to others, which ended up in real estate repayments of Koldo himself, in his name or in that of other people in his environment. Since 2020, he paid for three flats in Alicante. In order not to be detected, he even named one after his two-year-old daughter. It has been known that the two brothers wanted to start the restructuring of the patrimony to recover each one’s own. “We have to go to the notary to rectify the matter about the girl”, admits Koldo in a recent conversation.
They soon began to suspect that they were being investigated. The first alarm came from an inspection by the Tax Agency in Aldama for the unjustified income he had received from Soluciones de Gestión. Because of the subpoena came the concern: “Whenever someone goes there and starts yelling, they have a problem,” says Cueto. An acquaintance asked Koldo two weeks before the arrest not to use the phone because of the suspicion that he was being investigated. “Don’t worry, I know everything. I know they are there, how they are, when they are there,” admits Koldo. But the impunity he thought he had was not so robust.
