The Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, with the supervision of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, has taken twenty months to unravel, classify and tie up the so-called ‘Koldo plot’. During this last year and a half, investigators have been eliminating the straw until they reach the needle, the center of the corruption that affects a government ministry that emerged from the motion of censure against Mariano Rajoy. Administrative files, contracts, business links, bank accounts and personal relationships, until they have defined the network: all united by the same purpose, to enrich themselves illegally, through commissions and ‘bribes’, at the cost of a global health crisis.
Since the last major cases of corruption were uncovered, most of them linked to the Popular Party, such as Gürtel, Púnica or Lezo, in addition to the ERE of Andalusia, the fight against this scourge seemed reduced to specific matters of little importance. However, this scandal that in a few days has led to the defenestration of José Luis Ábalos, one of the most important socialist leaders in the first Executive of Pedro Sánchez, has opened the gap of fraudulent use of public money at a time of maximum chaos. and lack of control like the pandemic.
The abuse of emergency contracts in the health crisis has already been put on the table by the Court of Auditors. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office had known for a long time that it would have to analyze several of these awards and determine which ones could have involved a criminal offense. All parties have used these contracts as a political weapon and it is the job of the security forces, the Prosecutor’s Office and the justice system to detect which ones involved corruption.
As can be analyzed from the summary of the case, to which La Vanguardia has had access, this matter came from the hand of a complaint from the general secretary of the PP of Madrid, Alfonso Serrano, in March 2022. Anti-corruption saw reasons, such as minimum, for an analysis. A company, Management Solutions (SG), had obtained contracts with several administrations for the acquisition of masks without prior experience. Two months later, the UCO was requesting requirements from State Ports, Adif and the Ministry of the Interior. With those three contracts alone, the company earned 36 million euros. The objective was to analyze the files: the reason for the contract, the payment and the conditions.
The awarding of the contracts themselves was difficult to trace because at that time emergency contracts had been allowed, without competition. Basically it meant that whoever arrived first and offered the fastest time to bring masks got them.
Next point: look at who was behind SG. His owner, Íñigo Rotaeche. A priori, that name didn’t tell them anything. But they scratched a little deeper and discovered that the tax address of that company was the same as several companies in the Cueto Group. There all the alarms went off: the head of that business group, Juan Carlos Cueto, is accused of bribery in Angola within the framework of an Anti-Corruption operation linked to the state company Defex. Furthermore, in 2019, SG had zero income to rise to 53 million euros in 2020.
One of the companies with which he shared an address was Comercializadora de Pizarras, with Víctor de Aldama, president of Zamora C.F., as a partner. In addition, SG formed a joint venture with the Cueto group to build hospitals in Angola. That didn’t look good.
A company linked to the Cueto group, with serious judicial problems, which had gone from earning 5 million euros in 2017 to leaving its accounts at zero and then having a million-dollar injection in the middle of the pandemic, and without experience in the sector, receives nine contracts bang. On March 21, 2020, it achieved 24 million euros from State Ports; seven days later 12.5 million euros from Adif; on April 20, 3.5 million from the Ministry of the Interior; On April 22, it closed several contracts with the Canarian Health Service worth more than 12 million euros; and on May 8, the Balearic Health Service hires him for 3.7 million euros. In total, more than 55 million euros.
With this data, the agents, under the supervision of Anti-Corruption, begin monitoring and discover another character within this equation. Some of these businessmen maintained a relationship with a former advisor to the Minister of Transport, an organization to which Ports and Adif depend. His name: Koldo García Izaguirre. His trail was easy to locate. In many of José Luis Ábalos’s public appearances, she comes out behind him: his trusted man, escort, driver, who carried his briefcase and who ended up being a Renfe advisor.
The connections fell into place. Aldama, with business ties to Cueto, had sold a car to Koldo’s brother, Joseba, who also worked for the Ministry of Transportation.
The circle was narrowing around Koldo. After an analysis of his assets and accounts, his economic movements could be drawn. Since 2020, he bought three homes without a mortgage, placed in the name of his wife, his brother and his two-year-old daughter. Cash deposits into your accounts and practically no expenses on the cards is a way of proceeding that many corrupt officials fall for, which is called unjustified enrichment.
Thirteen months after the beginning of the investigations, the Anti-Corruption prosecutor files a complaint in the National Court for the crimes of criminal organization, money laundering, bribery and influence peddling against Koldo and Joseba García, the first-year wife, Cueto, Aldama, Rotaeche and a seventh person, a Civil Guard agent who had business with several of them. The latter was a bad apple within the ‘body’, something especially persecuted within the State’s own security forces and bodies.
On September 8, 2023, the case was judicially activated. The judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno admits the complaint to be processed, declares the proceedings secret and immediately authorizes the telephone intervention of ten mobile devices of those investigated as well as tracking devices in fifteen cars used by the plot. The agents only need a few days to discover the nerve center of the plot: the La Chalana seafood restaurant, behind the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, in Madrid.
The investigators inform the judge that Koldo García practically does not use the telephone. If they wanted to catch him they needed to take one more step. The judge authorizes the use of ambient recording in the restaurant for an appointment scheduled for mid-September, in addition to access to his instant messaging.
In that meeting they discover that those investigated are aware that there is an open file in the Tax Agency (AEAT). The treasury had located them to take a statement from Aldama and those responsible for SG. That performance was the one that set off all the alarms. In that file, they discover that the National Fraud Investigation Office (ONIF), also dependent on the Treasury, was going after SG for the commissions paid as a result of pandemic contracts.
The AEAT was not on the wrong track. The inspectors suspected that Aldama had received commissions from SG, probably in exchange for obtaining contracts with Transport. As it was later discovered, Koldo and Aldama had been in a relationship since at least 2018. Those investigated feared that if these actions continued, everything “about Delci, the briefcases or Ábalos” could be uncovered.
The agents continued listening. The more nervous they were, the more mistakes they made. They detect that since November, Aldama has been transferring his money to accounts in Portugal through a network of seven Portuguese companies “to avoid tax breaches for the six million euros of profits” obtained, as stated in a report provided in the judicial summary .
The investigators increased the list of people related to the core of the plot, including the brains of the network, the intermediaries, the facilitating intermediaries and the facilitating commission agents.
After so many months of research, the plot seemed to be already drawn. They just needed to know if there was someone above them all. From the ‘pricks’ they had discovered that Koldo was making “political” efforts to stop the AEAT inspection that could bring them all down. They record him meeting with several senior officials of the Ministry. After those meetings, Koldo ordered his brother to “deliver some papers to José.”
Investigators needed to know who it was. They followed Joseba and when they saw him with the papers, they set up a supposedly random police vehicle check to, in a ruse, open the envelope and see what was inside: several files on contracts awarded during the pandemic. The agents let Joseba go, who went to Ábalos’s house in Valencia to give him the documentation.
Three months later, on February 20, the operation exploded. Twenty arrested. For now they are all free and Ábalos, although separated by his party, is not under judicial investigation. The circle is closed, isn’t it?
