This Tuesday, Óscar Puente dismissed the Secretary General of State Ports, Álvaro Sánchez Manzanares. A movement that occurs just 48 hours after the Minister of Transport came out in defense of the officials and senior officials of his department who appear in the summary of the so-called Koldo case, emphasizing that “no one is being investigated” and that those who had declared , they had done so as “mere witnesses.” Including Manzanares.
The dismissal of Manzanares, reported by El País, is linked to the fact that he was responsible for processing the acquisition of eight million masks for 20 million euros from Soluciones de Gestión, the company recommended by Koldo García, the main advisor of the then Minister, José Luis Ábalos.
Despite the revelations in the summary, sources from Moncloa cited by the newspaper allude to a “loss of trust” as the reason for the dismissal and rule out any suspicions due to his connection with the corrupt plot.
Puertos del Estado is the public company that manages all Spanish public ports for goods and passengers, it depends directly on this ministerial department and was the first to contract with the plot to obtain masks in the midst of the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic.
