The judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno yesterday released Koldo García, former advisor to former minister José Luis Ábalos, after refusing to testify in the case of alleged irregular commissions in the purchase of masks during the pandemic. However, the investigator imposed a ban on the accused from leaving the country, the withdrawal of his passport and the obligation to appear in court every 15 days.
According to legal sources, the man who was one of Ábalos' trusted men was released after the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office refused to request his entry into prison after his arrest last Tuesday.
Along with Koldo García, the Civil Guard brought three other people to justice: Víctor de Aldama, president of CF Zamora; García's brother, Joseba García, and the Basque businessman Iñigo Rotaeche, all of them detained within the operation carried out by the central operational unit (UCO) and released, although 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 his passport, while the brother of the former advisor of the former minister remains under investigation, but without any precautionary measure.
The case is based on a complaint from the PP of Madrid to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which began the investigations and filed a complaint in September 2023. The judge investigates whether Koldo García used a front company to fraudulently obtain contracts at a time of health emergency , in the midst of the covid pandemic, since the company used, Soluciones de Gestión y Apoyo a Empresas SL, went from billing zero euros to 53 million in 2020.
The aim would be to find out if García used his contacts as an advisor in the Ábalos ministry to obtain contacts with other administrations, such as the governments of the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, as well as with public companies such as Adif, in which he was placed as an advisor.
According to a resolution of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court, the Tax Agency came to claim from the company in question a debt of 269,989 euros for the corporate tax for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014, which was paid with a bank guarantee.
The investigations suggest that Ábalos's former advisor could also receive irregular commissions in exchange for contracts, but sources in the investigation maintain that the former socialist minister does not appear involved in the case, at least in this first procedural moment.
On the other hand, the judicial siege could extend to the previous governments of the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, chaired by the current Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, and by the president of the Congress of Deputies, Francina Armengol. Both governments closed contracts for the purchase of masks with the company being investigated in this case that ended in problems.
On the part of the Canary Islands, its government awarded this company three contracts for an amount of 12.2 million euros. As a result of the first contract closed with Management Solutions, in 2020, only a third of the approved masks arrived and they were not of the agreed type. The order was completed in February 2021, but was paid for at the agreed price even though its cost on the market was already lower.
The Canarian Health Service, then directed by Conrado Domínguez, continued to rely on the company despite the quality problems of the order and awarded it new contracts. In the second, the Audience of Accounts drew attention to the absence of procedures in the adjudication.
Domínguez is also one of those investigated in the so-called Mascarillas de Canarias case, and his name also appears in the Mediator case, that of Tito Berni. The investigating judge summons him when 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 company under investigation 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 the fact that had bought them at the FPP2 price, they were actually surgical masks, and therefore an extra price of 2.6 million euros was paid for a material that has remained in storage since the possible fraud was verified.
Yesterday it was learned that Civil Guard agents appeared in July 2022 at the Balearic Health Service to claim the company's contracts. The agents requested the information from Manuel Palomino, who served as director of Management and Budgets of the Health Service. The company Soluciones de Gestión had been under investigation at least since then, something that the Armengol government was already aware of by virtue of this request for information.
