It is the turn of the mastermind of the alleged corruption plot for the collection of illegal commissions derived from the purchase of masks in the middle of the pandemic. The judge of the National Court investigating the case known as the Koldo case – named after the former advisor of the former minister José Luis Ábalos involved in the matter – has summoned Juan Carlos Cueto, the businessman who controlled the company Soluciones de Gestión, to testify. that the investigated contracts were awarded for a total of 54 million euros. Starting at 9:30 a.m. he will sit before the magistrate with the question of whether he will follow the path of the other four investigated who refused to testify or if he will begin to pull the rug.
Legal sources do not dare to predict the strategy that his defense will follow. The first arrested – the brother of Ábalos’ former advisor, Joseba García Izaguirre; the president of Zamora CF, Víctor de Aldama, and the businessman Iñigo Rotaeche – sat before Judge Moreno hours after their arrest, when summary secrecy was still decreed. The Prosecutor’s Office did not request prison for any of them, and the judge, following this criterion, released them all provisionally with precautionary measures for the majority of them. However, at this point in the investigation, the secrecy of the summary is lifted, so the parties in person should have had access to the entire investigation. Among them, the defense of Cueto.
The mastermind of the plot, according to investigators, was not arrested last week because he was outside of Spain. Although police sources explained that he was not on the run, but located at all times. And that it would be a matter of time before he appeared before the National Court, when the judge deemed it appropriate. Although he was not among the twenty people arrested last week by the Civil Guard, his name already appeared in the complaint filed by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office as the epicenter of the corrupt plot.
It is not the first time that Cueto will step into the hallways of the National Court. In 2019, Judge José de la Mata agreed to send him to the dock for the alleged diversion and appropriation of funds in contracts for the supply of police material to Angola. Precisely as a result of that matter, the famous Defex case, the accused businessman ceased to appear in the social bodies of the commercial companies of the Cueto Group, despite the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office indicates in its complaint that “his participation in the business activity would not be ceased.” That is, the Public Ministry maintains that, although Soluciones de Gestión was owned by Rotaeche and Luis Presa Medina and was managed by José Ángel Escorial, the company was actually controlled by Cueto and another of the alleged ringleaders of the plot: the president of Zamora.
This company was established in 2017 and, after a period of inactivity between 2018 and 2019, in 2020 it was awarded eight contracts for the supply of medical supplies through the negotiation procedure without advertising and on an emergency basis for an amount total of 54 million euros. It is estimated that he made a profit of 32% of the funds obtained.
The evidence collected so far indicates that it was Ábalos’ former advisor who provided the information on the award processes that came from the Ministry of Transportation to Aldama, whom he had known since at least December 2018. In an intercepted conversation, from the past December 4, the investigated businessmen Cueto and Rotaeche talk about “a favor” that Koldo García and his “former boss” had asked of them, without specifying who it was. Investigators suspect that it could allude to former minister José Luis Ábalos. That X can be clarified this morning if Cueto decides to speak.