Koldo García, former advisor to former Minister José Luis Ábalos, sat down today for the first time to explain his participation in the procurement of masks in the middle of the pandemic. He has done it in the Senate, where, with the PP having an absolute majority, an investigative commission has been approved. Some of the groups hoped that García, linked to the PSOE for years, would pull the rug. But it has not been that way. He has availed himself of his right not to answer the questions that the senators have asked him except to make some specific points.
His argument for refusing to intervene is that the first person he owes explanations to is the judge of the National Court who ordered his arrest last February. Ismael Moreno released him with certain precautionary measures but did not listen to his version of what had happened in the hiring by the Ministry of Transportation. On that occasion, García refused to testify as he found himself in the summary under summary secrecy. Now he knows what information the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has against him, but he has not yet asked to sit before the instructor.
Koldo García believes that everything is a accumulation of misunderstandings, that he has not taken any ‘bite’ for favoring a company, Management Solutions, to obtain the million-dollar contracts for masks and that he will be acquitted of all accusations. And in case that happens, he has issued a warning in the upper house. “When they declare me innocent, are they going to call me?”
García did not want to explain what his current relationship is with Ábalos and with the person who introduced him to the party, the current organizational secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán. He also has not been able to say exactly if he is currently active in the socialist formation. He does not know if he has been suspended from membership but in case he has been expelled, he issued another order to the party: “I will return.”
What he has said is that today he cannot maintain a relationship with anyone because of all the information published about him in the media. “I can’t even leave the house.” According to him, he has complained, “in the media I am dead,” “I am crucified alive.”
As he has made clear, when the judicial matter that weighs on him is resolved in his favor, then he will explain what he has to explain. The senator from the ERC, Joan Queralt, has given him some “advice.” “The first to agree has the favor of the Prosecutor’s Office,” he blurted out during your question time.
The PSOE spokesperson, Alfonso Gil, has taken his turn to recall the PP corruption cases and defend the hiring of public administrations in a pandemic, recalling the reports from the Court of Accounts that have not detected any suspicious files.
The PP spokesperson, Luis Santamaría, has been much more aggressive and has gone so far as to call Koldo García a “soulless” person for having taken advantage of the circumstances of the pandemic to enrich himself. He accused him of being one of “the worst type of people that can exist in a society, you belong to that class of soulless men capable of taking advantage of people’s misfortunes and doing so without any type of scruple and then going off to celebrate it.” , he pointed out.
For Koldo, the PP has said “truly savage things” about him and has already “blamed him, without knowing anything.” The former advisor has said he has a “very clear” conscience although he could not resist answering Bildu spokesperson, Bildu Josu Estarrona, when he asked him if he believes that someone should not have it. “You guys are the same, right? The first ones,” he cut her off.
