The judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno, in charge of investigating the known as the Koldo case, indicated in an order the former Minister of Transportation, José Luis Ábalos, as an “intermediary” of the plot to solve the problems derived from a mask contract with the Government of the Balearic Islands. The resolution is dated February 7, about fifteen days before the investigation exploded with around twenty detainees. The former head of Transportation, certified before the Supreme Court as a deputy (now in the Mixed Group), is not investigated in the case.
In the order by which several telephone interventions were authorized, the instructor of the National Court highlights a meeting held on January 10 in the private room of a seafood restaurant in Madrid. At this meeting were the former socialist minister, his former advisor and Jacobo Pombo, who is also not listed as a defendant in the case. For Judge Moreno, this meeting “has a special interest for the facts investigated,” since the day before the mastermind of the plot, Juan Carlos Cueto, and Koldo García had a telephone conversation.
In said call, according to investigations, “Cueto asked him to say something to a third party before he left for a trip to Peru on January 11.” “In fact, Koldo informed Cueto that one of the things to discuss with one of the people who will meet the next day – the day in which he meets with the former minister – was that, it is understood that he was referring to the efforts carried out with the Balearic Administration to resolve the claim of 2.6 million euros made to Soluciones de Gestión”, as the judge adds in the order to which La Vanguardia has had access.
The contract on which this part of the investigation deals is 3.7 million euros between the front company used by the plot and IbSalut in April 2020, in the hardest moments of the pandemic. At the end of November of last 2023, with the Popular Party already at the head of the Balearic Government, the judge observed new conversations that “reaffirm the influence” that Koldo García would be exerting “so that the claim did not prosper” and, therefore, “ favor Management Solutions.” In a literal sense, García affirms “that I am going to do something… I am going to rebound it.” An extreme to which Cueto asks: “But… does what you are going to do make sense? I ask… because if we are going to blindfold ourselves…”
A few days later, on December 2, Cuento contacted García, who informed him that they had just called him and he had arranged to meet Miguel Tellado and “Alberto” the next day. The first is the spokesperson for the Popular Group in the Congress of Deputies, but by “Alberto” it is not specified in the document who they were referring to. In said conversation, Ábalos’ former advisor stated that he had commented on this matter to the “former ministry where I worked before,” having obtained in response “that this matter has no legal implications whatsoever.”
On December 4, the mastermind of the plot informed another of the businessmen included in the complaint filed by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, Iñigo Rotaeche, that “in principle” the Balearic administration “had no intention of continuing” with the claim initiated [by the socialist government of Francina Armengol] to Management Solutions:
—This was a favor that your neighbor was asking… him and his former boss… and it seems that the other one said yes… because they gave him another favor in return…
Judge Ismael Moreno says that “the future of the telephone intervention” above would refer to José Luis Ábalos. It is on December 7 when García calls Cueto again to inform him that “everything is on the right track”, but that they told him that “no one needs to be seen and the more unnoticed it goes, the better.” Next, García added “I will use my means to put you in touch.” On the 14th of that same month, the advisor informed him that the issue of the Balearic Islands file was “more than done.”
The resolution on the Balearic Islands’ claim established a maximum period of three months, which expired on January 18. If there was no express statement, what was known as administrative silence would occur—what the ringleaders were supposedly looking for to stop the claim of almost three million euros.
Precisely on those dates, the judge appreciates that from “the observation of the telephone communications of those investigated, a few days before the indicated deadline, communications that address this matter were no longer observed, and it could be deduced that the expiration of the claim could have occurred. to Management Solutions”.
