The Civil Guard investigators who have unraveled the skein of the Koldo case came across an old acquaintance in their investigations. Juan Carlos Cueto Martín, whom the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office considers 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 turn out to 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 on Thursday at the National Court to testify about the masks. He responded only to his lawyer and the statement lasted twenty minutes. However, he will have no choice but to return, since this year the long-awaited Defex trial must begin, in which the public sector and the Spanish military-industrial and security complex intersect.
Cueto is accused of a contract for the sale of weapons and police material to Angola that in 2008 was obtained by the joint venture between one of his companies, Comercial Cueto 92, and the semi-public Defex (liquidated by the Spanish Government as a result of the scandal). According to the order of the investigating judge, José de la Mata, the operation, for 152 million euros, had an extra cost of one hundred million, diverted in bribes to officials of the African country and in illegal commissions pocketed by the directors of the companies involved. and 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 the Defex case uncovered was 41 million that surfaced in an account in Luxembourg of which Juan Carlos Cueto was the owner and which led the authorities of that country to notify the Spanish companies. For Cueto, whom the judge places at “the top of the organization,” the Prosecutor's Office is asking for 50 years in prison, only surpassed by the 50 years and seven months that he requests for the president of Defex and its commercial director.
In his indictment, from July 2018, the judge speaks of an “organization” that was dedicated to obtaining public contracts in foreign countries through bribes and sought to illicitly enrich itself by charging “brutal surcharges on the real cost of acquiring the goods, creating a whole structure of fictitious companies with false billing 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, also one related to rigged public contracts, is doing business with the public administration less than two years after his indictment. Cueto was covered. At the head of Management Solutions, the company that invoiced 50 million euros in several mask supply contracts, a certain Iñigo Rotaeche Lachiondo appears as owner. Investigators consider him to be a straw man and point to a possible family link: Cueto's wife, also accused in Defex, is called Iciar de Yraola Lachiondo.
The UCO believes that Soluciones de Gestión is actually “controlled” by Grupo Cueto, the family business conglomerate. One of the companies in the group is Comercial Cueto 92, that of Defex. Juan Carlos was removed from the group's organizational chart when he began to be investigated, but according to investigators, he is the one who continues to take the reins.
The report from the judicial police of the Civil Guard details the multiple indications that “corroborate” the link between Soluciones de Gestión and the Cueto Group. There is, to begin with, an Angolan track. Management Solutions was founded in 2002 in Zaragoza by a Spanish couple who had businesses in Angola and specialized in obtaining public contracts in that country, almost always through joint venture associations with other companies depending on the project in question. One of the companies with which it partnered 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 Príncipe de Asturias Street, is in a property owned by another Cueto company. Investigators have also identified several Cueto workers linked in different ways to Management Solutions, as well as “income and payments arising from or directed” to the conglomerate.
Despite his prominent indictment in Defex, Cueto enjoyed astonishing public invisibility. There was no photo of him on the internet until this Thursday.
