“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 prepared by the Tax Agency after the inspection open to the company of the Koldo plot used to obtain contracts with the public administration and which has now been contributed to the investigation carried out in the National Court.
The inspection, to which La Vanguardia has had access, concludes with the existence of tax crimes in members of the plot for contracting with public organizations during the pandemic to supply masks. This investigation was parallel and independent of the one opened by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard. In fact, when the inspector in charge began to pull the blanket to proceed to lift the veil, he called those responsible for Management Solutions and Víctor de Aldama, president of Zamora C.F., to testify. and recipient of part of the money from the company hired by the Ministry in 2020.
The inspection analyzed the movement of public funds, SG emails and asked the administrations the reason why they had hired a company that had not justified any experience in the sale of masks or sanitary materials. The answers he found were most “peculiar”, which led him to conclude that the name of the company came directly from the Ministry of Transport headed by the socialist José Luis Ábalos, suspended by the PSOE although he is not investigating.
The one who is is one of his right-hand men in recent years, Koldo García. The AEAT inspector found him. Analyzing SG's emails, he found one with an “official” from the Ministry, named Koldo. In the records he appeared as a Renfe advisor and he called there. The response was that this person could not have negotiated anything related to mask contracts because the train company did not manage such tenders. What caught the attention of the head of the Tax Agency is that this person had a corporate email from the Ministry. The inspector did not receive any explanation regarding Koldo's involvement in this entire network. 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 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 public organizations (3.27 euros per mask instead of 2.6). The Secretary of State referred to the success of deliveries in Transportation; 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 responded that it used the Puertos del Estado supplier. Therefore, for the inspector the key resided in the first contract. He sensed that the original sin came from Puertos. He wanted to know why he hired SG. He did not receive a response “beyond referring to the instructions received from the Ministry to hire this company.” The official response was that “said Ministry (Transport) was the one who organized the selection of the supplier and provided the available information to this organization.”
The response from Ports does not coincide with that given by the Ministry in an administrative claim. As stated by the UCO in an official letter, "it is striking that this Ministry reports that 'in the period considered, no contracting procedure was processed by the Ministry' for the supply of masks." "Accordingly, no offers were received," he adds.
That inspection already showed that it would be every man for himself. The AEAT detected that payments came from SG to companies in Aldama. The person in charge of this company justified them by being their supplier in the search for better flight prices to bring the merchandise from China. The airlines denied it. Aldama argued that he was the one who really contracted with the administration but did not have a suitable company and located Juan Carlos Cueto to create a kind of shadow UTE. Another piece of information that bothered the inspector. “The winner 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 to be the head of SG but rather another interposed person.
Through 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 typical of the emergency situation.”
This inspection set off all the alarms in the plot, as recorded in the telephone interventions recorded by the Civil Guard. Koldo blamed Aldama for the fact that the inspection could end up opening the canopy of thunder. “I don't want to die,” said Ábalos' former advisor in a conversation with Cueto.
Since 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 mistrust between them. An example is the conversation between Koldo and a second lieutenant of the Civil Guard, José Luis Rodríguez, who was assigned to the Ministry of Transportation during the Ábalos era 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 advisor to the minister confesses to the uniformed man that the brain of the organization, Juan Carlos Cueto, “could not even see him.”
The civil guard goes one step further and admits that he does not trust him and, seeking García's approval, asks him if he does: “look into my eyes, do you trust him?” He answers negatively up to three times: “No, no, it's not trustworthy.” To which 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 stop the Treasury inspection, behind his back he was not so kind. “He left for peteneras, he ran away and didn't say anything,” he recalls in another of the conversations.
On February 3, two weeks after the operation exploded, leading to twenty arrests, Koldo blames all the evils on Aldama. He calls him a “subnormal dog.” Although it was not the first time that he disqualified someone who had been his alleged accomplice. Throughout the summary he describes how he nicknames him “woof woof”, “pitbull”, “buffalo” or the “marquis”.
On February 20, the police operation exploded with 20 arrests. They are all free. Koldo García refused to testify. For now he hasn't opened his mouth. The one who has done it is Ábalos in various interviews in which he disassociates himself 100% from this network. He was still unaware that in the summary he was 'caught' eating with Koldo or receiving documentation from his brother Joseba linked to the suspicious tax files.
The PSOE, after the case fell like a bomb on the political board, tried to establish a firewall with the former Minister of Transport, whom it provisionally suspended from militancy. However, the opposition is not satisfied and is looking for a domino effect to continue making pieces fall. And in that 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 of her. According to a report from the Civil Guard, the plot also tried to take advantage in Castilla-La Mancha in those horrible moments of the pandemic. But unlike the Balearic Islands or the Canary Islands, the Government of socialist Emiliano García-Page detected that the documentation provided by the company in the plot offered “clearly defective” masks, so they did not evaluate the acquisition. Neither did the Government of Asturias, which also received a proposal from SG.
The Balearic drift 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 supplies 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, complying with Anti-Corruption orders.
It's now in Koldo's hands whether he wants to point fingers at his former boss or even aim higher. Those investigated are now in a position to seek agreements with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office to reach an agreement on penalties in exchange for pulling the rug. Each of them must decide whether to apply the maxim 'every man for himself' or maintain the 'status quo' because if one falls they all fall.
