“It was the Ministry (of Transport) directly and not State Ports that organized the selection of the supplier. We have no more information.” This phrase appears in the report drawn up by the Tax Agency after the inspection open to society of the Koldo plot used to obtain contracts with the public administration and which has now been contributed to the investigation followed in the National Court .
The inspection, to which La Vanguardia has had access, concludes that there have been tax crimes by members of the plot for contracting with public bodies during the pandemic to supply masks. This investigation was parallel and independent to the one opened by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office and the central operational unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard. In fact, when the inspector in charge began to discover the mess, he called the managers of Soluciones de Gestión (SG) and Víctor de Aldama, president of Zamora CF and recipient of part of the money from the company contracted by the Ministry, to testify in 2020.
The inspection analyzed the movement of public funds, SG e-mails and asked the administrations the reason why it had hired a company that had not justified any experience in the sale of masks or sanitary material. The answers he found were most “peculiar”, which led him to conclude that the name of the company came directly from within the Ministry of Transport led by the socialist José Luis Ábalos, suspended by the PSOE all and that he is not investigating.
Who does is one of his right-hand men of recent years, Koldo García. The inspector of the AEAT (Treasury) found it. Analyzing SG’s e-mails, he found an “official” from the ministry, named Koldo. In the records he appeared as a Renfe adviser and there he called. The answer was that this person could not have negotiated anything related to mask contracts because the train company did not manage these tenders. What caught the attention of the head of the Tax Agency was that this person had a corporate e-mail from the ministry. Of Koldo’s connection to this whole plot, the inspector did not receive any explanation. As he states in his report, the arguments received were “half-truths or lies”. However, he discovered that Koldo’s brother, Joseba, bought a car from one of Aldama’s companies. So he suspects that there was a personal relationship between them.
The Treasury representative went to the Ministry of the Interior, which hired SG for a price higher than that set by the public bodies (3.27 euros for masks instead of 2.6). The Secretary of State referred to the success of the deliveries to Transport; the Balearic Government – ??also a contractor – received an email from SG and they accepted it; in the Canary Islands it was at the proposal of the Health Emergency Management Committee, and Adif replied that it used the State Ports supplier. So for the inspector the key was in the first contract. He sensed that the original sin came from Ports. He wanted to know why he hired SG. He received no response “beyond referring to the instructions received from the ministry to hire this company”. The official answer was that “the mentioned ministry (Transport) was the one that organized the selection of the supplier and provided the information available to this body”.
Ports’ answer does not match the one given by the ministry in an administrative claim. As recorded by the UCO in an office “it is conspicuous that that ministry reports that ‘in the period considered no procurement procedures were processed by the ministry’ for the supply of masks”. “Accordingly, no offers were received”, he adds.
That inspection already showed that it would be a field that can. The AEAT detected that payments were coming out of S G to Aldama companies. The manager of this company justified them because he was their supplier in the search for better flight prices to bring the goods from China. The airlines denied this. Aldama argued that he was the one who actually contracted with the Administration, but he did not have a suitable company and located Juan Carlos Cueto to make a kind of UTEa l’ombra. Another fact that squeaked at the inspector. “The awardee of the public contracts should have known who was really behind the company, and this, if true, would already be a relevant reason for suspicion.” Cueto does not appear as the owner of SG, but another intervening person.
From the media it was known that Cueto is accused of bribery in Angola. The inspection also warns that the amounts and units contracted by the ministry were “very high”. The inspector concludes that these public companies had important “knowledge gaps, perhaps specific to the emergency situation”.
This inspection set off all the alarms in the plot, as stated in the telephone interventions recorded by the Civil Guard. Koldo blamed Aldama that the inspection might end up opening the throne box. “I don’t want to die,” said Ábalos’ ex-advisor in a conversation with Cueto.
From the end of October 2023, when they received the first notification from the AEAT, the tension increased, because they were demanding three million euros and could end up accused of a tax crime. These nerves ended in confrontations and distrust between them. An example is the conversation held between Koldo and a sub-lieutenant of the Civil Guard, José Luis Rodríguez, who was assigned to the Ministry of Transport at the time of Ábalos and who has business with members of the plot. They met on January 10 at La Chalana, the Madrid seafood restaurant that became the nerve center of the plot. The former adviser to the minister reveals to the uniformed that the brain of the organization, Juan Carlos Cueto, “couldn’t even see him”.
The civil guard goes a step further and admits that he doesn’t trust him and, seeking García’s approval, asks him if he does: “Look me in the eyes, do you trust him? “. Up to three times he answers negatively: “No, no, it’s not trustworthy”. And Rodríguez sentences: “His word is not worth it to me”. Despite Cueto’s good tone with Koldo, whom he insisted for months to pull the strings and slow down the Treasury inspection, he was not so kind behind the scenes. “He’s gone, help me, he’s hacked them and he hasn’t said anything,” is recorded in another of the conversations.
On February 3, two weeks before the operation exploded and twenty arrests were made, Koldo blamed Aldama for all the evils. He calls it a “subnormal dog”. Although it was not the first time that he disqualified what had been his alleged partner. Throughout the summary it is collected how he calls it “bub-bub”, “pit bull”, “buffalo” or the “marquis”.
On February 20, the police operation was launched, with 20 arrests. They are all free. Koldo García refused to testify. So far he has not opened his mouth. The one who has done it is Ábalos in several interviews in which he disassociates himself 100% from this plot. He still did not know that in the summary he hunted them by having lunch with Koldo or receiving documentation from his brother Joseba linked to the files under tax suspicion.
The PSOE, after the case fell like a bomb on the political board, tried to establish a firewall with the ex-Minister of Transport, whom it suspended as a precautionary measure of militancy. However, the opposition is not satisfied and is looking for a domino effect to keep the pieces falling. And in this intention, the next in the spotlight is the third authority of the State, Francina Armengol, who during her time at the head of the Government of the Balearic Islands signed one of the contracts under suspicion.
According to a report from the Civil Guard, the plot also tried to get juice in Castilla-La Mancha in those horrible moments of the pandemic. But unlike the Balearic Islands or the Canary Islands, the Government of the socialist Emiliano García-Page detected that the documentation provided by the plot company offered “clearly defective” masks, so they did not value the acquisition. Neither did the Government of Asturias, which also received a proposal from SG.
The drift from the Balearic Islands began on April 25, 2020, with an email in which the alleged ringleaders offered 1.4 million masks, which arrived a day later for a price of 3.7 million. A report a couple of months later established that the medical equipment purchased did not meet the requirements of FPP2, so they were not used and ended up in a warehouse until they expired. It was two years later when the Civil Guard requested the contract in compliance with Anticorruption orders.
Now this matter is in Koldo’s hands if he wants to point at his former boss or even aim higher. Those under investigation are now in a position to seek agreements with the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office to reach an agreement on penalties in exchange for discovering the trick. Each of them will have to decide whether to apply the maxim of campi who can or maintain the status quo, because if one falls, they all fall.
