The judge of the National Court, Ismael Moreno, released yesterday the ex-advisor of former minister José Luis Ábalos, Koldo García, after refusing to testify in the case of alleged irregular commissions in the purchase of masks during the pandemic. Nevertheless, the instructor imposed a ban on the accused from leaving the country, the withdrawal of his passport and the obligation to appear in court every fortnight.
According to legal sources, the one who was one of Ábalos’ confidants was released after the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office refused to request his admission to prison after his arrest on Tuesday.
Together with Koldo García, the Civil Guard put three other people on trial: Víctor de Aldama, president of CF Zamora; García’s brother, Joseba García, and the Basque businessman Iñigo Rotaeche, all of whom were arrested in the operation carried out by the central operative unit (UCO) and released, but with different precautionary measures.
The judge determined for Aldama the same obligations as for Koldo García; for Rotaeche, the ban on leaving the country and the withdrawal of the passport, while the brother of the ex-minister’s ex-advisor remains under investigation, but without any precautionary measures.
The case stems from a complaint by the PP of Madrid before the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, which initiated investigations and filed a complaint in September 2023. The judge is investigating whether Koldo García used a front company to fraudulently obtain contracts in a moment of health emergency, in the midst of the covid pandemic, since the company used, Soluciones de Gestión y Apoyo a Empresas SL, went from zero euros to 53 million in 2020.
It would try to find out if García used his contacts as an adviser to the Ábalos ministry to obtain contacts with other administrations, such as the governments of the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, in addition to public companies such as Adif, in which he get to be placed as a counselor.
According to a resolution of the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the National Court, the Tax Agency came to claim from the company in question a debt of 269,989 euros for corporate tax for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014, and which was paid with a bank guarantee.
Investigations indicate that Ábalos’ ex-advisor could also receive irregular commissions in exchange for contracts, but sources in the investigation claim that the former socialist minister does not appear in the case, at least in this first procedural moment.
Instead, the judicial siege could be extended to the previous governments of the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, presided over by the current Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, and by the president of the Congress of Deputies, Francina Armengol. The two governments closed contracts for the purchase of masks with the company that is being investigated in this case, which ended in problems.
On behalf of the Canary Islands, their government awarded this company three contracts for an amount of 12.2 million euros. As a result of the first contract signed with Soluciones de Gestión, in 2020, only a third of the paired masks arrived, and they were not of the agreed type. The order was completed in February 2021, but was paid at the agreed price, despite the fact that the cost in the market was already lower.
The Canary Health Service, then led by Conrado Domínguez, continued to count on the company, despite the quality problems of the order, and awarded it new contracts. In the second, the Court of Auditors drew his attention to the absence of procedures in the award.
Domínguez is also one of those investigated in the so-called Mascaretes de les Canarias case, and his name also appears in the Mediator case, that of Tito Berni. The investigating judge summons him because she understands that he is part of the plot, but he has not yet been called to testify.
The third contract awarded by the Canary Islands to the investigated company was the largest, worth five million euros.
In the case of the Balearic Islands, a contract worth 3.7 million is being investigated for the purchase of 1.4 million masks in April 2020. The government of Francina Armengol carried out a verification of the materials and verified that, despite having bought them at the price of FPP2, they were actually surgical masks, and therefore overpaid by €2.6 million for material that remains in storage since the possible fraud was discovered .
Yesterday it was learned that Civil Guard agents impersonated the Balearic Health Service in July 2022 to claim the company’s contracts. The agents requested the information from Manuel Palomino, who was the director of Management and Budgets of the Health Service. The company Soluciones de Gestión was being investigated at least since then, which the Government of Armengol already knew, by virtue of this request for information.
