The investigators of the Civil Guard who have unraveled the fraud in the Koldo case ran into an old acquaintance during the investigations. Juan Carlos Cueto Martín, whom the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office considers to be the mastermind of the mask plot, was investigated ten years ago by the same UCO (the central operational unit of the Civil Guard), in what would be one of the largest cases of corruption in Spain, the Defex case, in which the businessman is one of the main defendants.
Cueto appeared at the National Hearing on Wednesday to testify about the masks. He answered only his lawyer and the statement lasted twenty minutes. However, he will have no choice but to return, as this year begins the long-awaited Defex trial in which the public sector and the Spanish military industrial and security complex collide.
Cueto is accused of a contract for the sale of weapons and police equipment in Angola that in 2008 obtained the UTE between one of his companies, Comercial Cueto 92, and the semi-public Defex (liquidated by the Spanish Government following the scandal) . According to the interlocutory of the investigating judge, José de la Mata, the operation, for 152 million euros, had an overrun of one hundred million, diverted in bribes to the officials of the African country and in illegal commissions that were pocketed the managers of the companies involved and the intermediaries, through a complex network of shell companies. A mechanism that is reproduced on a smaller scale in the case of masks.
In fact, what uncovered the Defex case were 41 million that surfaced in an account in Luxembourg of which Juan Carlos Cueto was the holder and which led the authorities of that country to warn the Spanish ones. For Cueto, whom the judge places at “the top of the organization”, the Prosecutor’s Office is asking for 50 years in prison, only exceeded by the 50 years and seven months that it requests for the president of Defex and its commercial director.
In the prosecution order, from July 2018, the judge talks about an “organization” that was dedicated to obtaining public contracts in foreign countries through bribes and wanted to enrich itself illicitly by charging “brutal overcharges on the real cost of acquisition of the goods, erecting a whole structure of fictitious companies and false invoicing and simulating the provision of services by these shell companies, for tens of millions of euros”.
It is surprising that a defendant in a corruption case, in addition to one related to manipulated public contracts, is doing business with the public administration less than two years after his imputation. Cueto was covered. At the head of Soluciones de Gestión, the company that invoiced 50 million euros in several contracts for the supply of masks, one Iñigo Rotaeche Lachiondo is listed as the owner. The investigators consider him to be a straw man and point to a possible family link: Cueto’s wife, also charged with Defex, is called Iciar de Yraola Lachiondo.
The UCO believes that Soluciones de Gestión is actually “controlled” by Grup Cueto, the family business conglomerate. One of the companies in the group is Comercial Cueto 92, that of Defex. Juan Carlos Cueto was removed from the group’s organizational chart when he began to be investigated, but, according to the investigators, he is the one who continues to lead it.
The report of the judicial police of the Civil Guard uncovers the multiple indications that “corroborate” the link between Soluciones de Gestión and the Cueto Group. There is, at the entrance, an Angolan track. Soluciones de Gestión was founded in 2002 in Zaragoza by a Spanish couple who had businesses in Angola and specialized in securing public awards there, almost always through joint venture partnerships with other companies, according to the project of to be treated One of the companies he partnered with to build several hospitals and medical centers in Angola, as well as floating thermal power plants, was Comercial Cueto 92.
On the other hand, the Madrid headquarters of Soluciones, on Carrer Príncipe de Asturias, is in a building owned by another company in Cueto. The investigators have also identified several Cueto workers linked in different ways to Soluciones de Gestión, as well as “income and payments emanating from or directed” to the conglomerate.
Despite the prominent imputation to Defex, Cueto enjoyed a surprising public invisibility. There was no photo of him on the internet until this Wednesday.
