Koldo García, who was the person most trusted by the former Minister of Transport and former organizational secretary 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. The one who was Ábalos’ shadow, his advisor, driver and protector is now facing a judicial and political tsunami. The data that is becoming known from the investigation places both García and his former boss in a situation with still unpredictable consequences. The x that now has to be cleared is whether the former number three of the socialists knew it and allowed it. Ábalos has been very categorical in denying it.
For now, there is nothing in the investigation to indicate direct knowledge except for some references from third parties: “this was a favor that your neighbor (Koldo) and his former boss were asking, and it seems that the other one said yes… because they have given him another favor in return.” This phrase that alludes to Ábalos comes from a recent conversation between two of those investigated in the plot.
This comment occurred in December, while the main investigators, including Koldo García, had their phones tapped until the moment of their arrest last Tuesday by order of the judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno. This comment also demonstrates 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 operational unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office clearly outline what the plot would have consisted of. Since he arrived at the Ministry of Transportation at the hands of Ábalos, Koldo García acquired more power, becoming a director of Renfe and a member of the Governing Council of the State Ports Public Body. Those positions, together with his 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 began a relationship. According to the story that appears both in the Prosecutor’s complaint and in the judicial records to which La Vanguardia has had access, when the pandemic arrived they came together to hit the ball. García would have warned Aldama that contracts would be issued without competition in the midst of a health emergency for the purchase of medical supplies. The businessman, who did not have the capacity to manage it, called another person with whom he had already done other business together, Juan Carlos Cueto, an old acquaintance of the justice system still pending a trial for bribery in the Defex case. Cueto contributed to a company, Management Solutions, which went from 0 to 54 million euros in revenue in 2020.
Investigators suspect that Koldo notified the contracts that were going to be advertised in advance. Several emails and various documentation show that they had already begun contracting for the purchase of masks and their transportation before the offers were made public. On the same day of its 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 part of it to invest in a slate business. Another part has 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 with 500 euro bills and during those years he deposited up to 350,000 in cash into his or his wife’s accounts and more than 200,000 through his brother Joseba, also investigated. The money from these accounts was moved to others that ended in amortization of Koldo’s own properties, in his name or in that of other people around him. Since 2020, he has paid for three apartments in Alicante. To avoid being detected, he even put one of them in the name of his two-year-old daughter. It has been learned that the two brothers were going to begin the restructuring of the assets to each recover what is theirs. “We have to go to the notary to rectify what happened to the girl,” Koldo acknowledges in a recent conversation.
Those investigated soon began to suspect that they were after them. The first alarm came from an inspection by the Tax Agency of Aldama for the unjustified income it had received from Management Solutions. When he was summoned, concern arose: “if someone goes there and starts breaking and slashing, they have a problem,” says Cueto. An acquaintance asked Koldo two weeks before his arrest not to use the phone on suspicion that he was being investigated. “Don’t worry, I know everything. I know who they are, how they are, when they are,” Koldo admits. But the impunity that he thought he had was not so robust.
