The investigators of the Koldo case are not able to gauge, for the moment, how far the tentacles of the plot of commissions that implicate the former right-hand man of former minister José Luis Ábalos can reach. Sources close to the investigations warn that the investigation remains in the embryonic phase – although with sufficient solid evidence to make the arrests last week – and therefore do not rule out a new list of accusations now that the devices and documents seized during the investigation are being analyzed. the registers. To this we must add a key piece of the network: the businessman Juan Carlos Cueto, who has not yet been arrested.
Cueto is an old acquaintance in the country’s police and judicial archives. Whom the agents of the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard now place as the alleged mastermind of the plot is pending trial for his alleged involvement in the Defex case, the largest corruption scandal for the sale of weapons to Angola. The businessman was abroad at the time the arrests were carried out last week. Sources close to the investigation detail that he is not a fugitive, but is located. The same sources rule out that Cueto has been able to destroy evidence in recent days.
Cueto, who would have been the person who put the company Soluciones de Gestión in the hands of the plot, will be brought to justice in the coming days, according to legal sources. This company was awarded the investigated contracts for a total of 54 million euros. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office gathered evidence that Cueto controlled the company, despite the fact that his name did not appear in the corporate bodies of his family group. “His participation in the business activity would not have ceased,” is stated in the complaint filed by the Public Ministry.
That is, he maintained his power through family members or employees. For this reason, investigators believe that Cueto is a key piece to continue pulling on to elucidate the true scope of the plot. Once the “direct and close relationship” between Koldo and Cueto is proven, for whom the Prosecutor’s Office requests 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 much alive,” tax sources corroborate. Proof of this is that when Anti-Corruption filed the complaint in the National Court – in September of last year – it only listed 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 Instruction 2 of the National Court, around twenty arrests were finally ordered.
Among those seven, in addition to Ábalos’ former advisor and the businessman Cueto, are Koldo García’s wife, Patricia Uriz, who was arrested and released shortly after, and the second lieutenant of the Civil Guard José Luis Rodríguez García. Neither of these two defendants have yet gone before Judge Ismael Moreno.
In addition to these pending statements – if they do not avail themselves of their right not to do so – new lines of investigation may arise from the enormous telephone interventions that have been carried out during the months that the case has been under summary secrecy. In one of them, as recorded in one of Moreno’s records, two businessmen talk about “a favor” that Koldo García and his “former boss” had asked of them, without specifying who it is.
“This is a favor that your neighbor (Koldo) was asking for… him and his former boss… and it seems that the other one has said yes… because they have given him another favor in return,” the message reads. . The order, issued last Friday when the case was still secret, did not provide more context. But in it, the instructor mentions that message to show how those investigated talked “about other participants in the events.”
