The extended confession of businessman Víctor de Aldama in the National Court has become the new master beam of all the ramifications of the Koldo case. Two hours of testimony that opened the doors of the Soto del Real prison thanks to the key support of Anti-Corruption and that has been seasoned with public statements and documents provided to the Supreme Court. The bulk of his accusations are directed against former minister José Luis Ábalos, about whom he said that even before the pandemic they proposed the transfer of a luxury apartment as a commission for future rigged contracts. It all involves Aldama, whom investigators consider a “nexus of the plot,” between statements about his contacts with senior government officials and the invitation to look for evidence of those conversations on his mobile phone, protected with a “security key.” .
Aldama declared before the judge who is investigating him for being one of the protagonists of the Delorme operation, awarded more than 50 million euros during the pandemic supposedly thanks to his closeness to the then Minister Ábalos and, above all, to his right hand man. , Koldo García. And in his latest contribution of documentation to the Supreme Court, he has extended the focus of suspicion beyond the pandemic: he states that he paid and collected commissions for rigging contracts dependent on that Ministry but focused on public road works, not just masks.
Before the judges, Aldama has provided two main pieces of evidence for his statements: his word and three sheets taken from the 2021 General State Budgets. Folios with some works on roads marked in pink and others in green to, according to his story, explain to future which contracts had already been “pre-awarded” to commission-paying companies and which could be. In writing, Aldama does not reveal the origin of the document or the claims about the color code associated with corruption.
In his COPE interview given shortly after leaving prison, Aldama became defensive when asked about the evidence he had regarding all of these accusations. “No one signs a receipt when you give them 400,000 euros,” the presenter told him. “Looking at what we have seen, in this country we already have to show the photograph with the knife in the chest. “I don’t know what else I have to prove,” the businessman responded. These are aspects that he will have to develop next Monday, December 16, when he appears as a defendant before the Supreme Court judge. Four days before, José Luis Ábalos himself will do so, who this Friday announced that he does not plan to declare at the moment.
Aldama’s judicial statement and documentation focus on his relationship with the then minister and today a non-party deputy in Congress. As far as papers are concerned, beyond his words, the businessman reviews his relationship with him through the trips that he helped organize to Mexico, Venezuela or Georgia, and which started shortly after the arrival of the PSOE to the Government in 2018 with the motion of censure. And he provides a contract that, according to his version, he agreed with Ábalos when he was minister, for the transfer of a luxury apartment on Paseo de la Castellana that never materialized. As a commission for future favors to the plot. At the moment there is no evidence that this would be the case, beyond the word of the businessman, accused in two cases of corruption and million-dollar fraud against the Treasury.
One of the pillars of this document is the recognition that he himself collected commissions for rigging contracts before the pandemic. A Valencian businessman, he claims, paid him 77,500 euros in 2019 as a bribe. This is a payment that was already under the scrutiny of the National Court and the Civil Guard, and which appears in several reports. The question that remains is why the transfers had been made. Aldama clears up the mystery in his writing before the Supreme Court: “For the management of the awards obtained from the Ministry of Transportation.” He also claims that another successful company paid him 18,000 euros “as compensation” for a public works award.
The first to appear before Judge Leopoldo Puente will be Ábalos. What was foreseeable was that he would try to continue his public speech in recent months and deny his involvement with the plot, but this Thursday the former minister made it clear that he has no intention of testifying. He prefers to wait for Aldama to do so four days later, who will have to explain to the magistrate if he has more evidence or if he can be more specific about the contracts that he allegedly rigged for the companies that paid him the commissions. The document that he provided with colored underlines points to more than 100 road works awards throughout the country in 2021, apart from the 53 million that his company obtained during the pandemic and also apart from the commissions it charged in the second half of 2019.
Víctor de Aldama’s agenda
Halfway between the cluster bomb and the fireworks, Víctor de Aldama’s statement and documentation also reveals an objective: to make it clear to the judge and to society in general that he was not just anyone and that his relationships did not remain in Koldo García or José Luis Ábalos. Senior officials, ministers and even the President of the Government himself and his wife were part of his contacts, according to his story, which he defends with screenshots of his phone book to prove that he had their numbers. He also slips that the conversations are on his mobile phone seized by the UCO and protected by a security code.
The businessman has set his sights on three main targets: Minister Ángel Víctor Torres, the number two of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán and Carlos Moreno, chief of staff of Vice President María Jesús Montero. Regarding the first, he claims that the plot asked him for 50,000 euros as part of the rigging of a contract to rehabilitate the headquarters of the Canary Islands Tax Agency, a contract that did not even pass through the hands of the Canary Islands government that Torres then directed. In addition, he says, he refused to pay the alleged toll. And two annexes: the screenshot that shows that he has the current minister’s phone number and the statement that he rented an apartment in Madrid for “meetings of various natures in which he participated with other people.” Torres has denied the accusations and has announced that he will expand legal actions against Aldama.
Regarding Santos Cerdán, a deputy and close to Koldo García when he was in politics in Navarra, Aldama insists on the 15,000 euros that he claims before the judge that he paid him. The confusing explanation that he has given for the moment is that he had to pay them as a result of a “disagreement” with the company, another successful bidder. And regarding Carlos Moreno, a senior Treasury official with María Jesús Montero, Aldama returns to the real estate sector to affirm that he offered him advice on the purchase of an apartment, although in the end he bought another house not related to the businessman under investigation. From there, according to Aldama’s story, their relationship jumps to an alleged favorable treatment in the management of an alleged debt deferral in the Treasury in favor of one of his companies.
Víctor de Aldama’s agenda
María Jesús Montero is one of those names from the current Government that Aldama has cited as part of the authorities with whom he met in those years. The Minister of Finance, in her appearance in the Senate, was clear in saying that she has “never ever” met with him. At COPE, Aldama clarified: he was part of a common telematic meeting in which he did not speak and later they met at a birthday party with Ábalos.
The rescue of Air Europa has been a big hunt for the right since the pandemic. Because of the amount of more than 400 million euros that he is trying to put under suspicion and because it allows Begoña Gómez, the wife of the President of the Government, to be brought up. Before Herrera, the businessman was able to develop what his relationship with her was, something in which the National Court has not shown greater interest for now. A “get-together” with Begoña Gómez and Javier Hidalgo, CEO of the company, after an event they had attended. According to Aldama himself, they never talked about the rescue of Air Europa, something that popular accusations in the case have been trying to link for months without success to the wife of the President of the Government.
Regarding his closeness with Pedro Sánchez, Aldama insists on his version that the photograph he has with him came from the president’s initiative to thank him for the efforts that, he claims, he was doing in Mexico. And he provides as evidence a letter from his then chief of staff, Iván Redondo. A letter that was not addressed to him and in which Pedro Sánchez’s then collaborator, one year and nine months after the photo, sent a meeting proposal with a refusal.
“I am not the corrupt one”
Halfway between the accused and the political commentator, at COPE Víctor de Aldama acknowledged his “mistakes” but defended: “I am not the corrupt one, the politician is the corrupt one.” His list of names of politicians associated with amounts of money, said the businessman, are not paid commissions, but a project that was never fulfilled. “I have not bribed anyone, I am guilty of having paid an official, but there was behind it that if I did not pay it would not continue to be given to me, and in the end I am a businessman,” he defends. A story that clashes, in part, with the evidence that he himself has presented to the Supreme Court.
His great sin, he considers, has been “not having reported it.” “There is evidence, I think, more than enough, for less than this a motion of censure was made against Mr. Rajoy. For 200-odd thousand euros, which, furthermore, didn’t even affect him, and he was kicked out of the Government,” he added in this interview with Carlos Herrera.
In a few days the Supreme Court will fully enter into the ramification of the Koldo case with the interrogation of José Luis Ábalos and, a few days later, the statements of Víctor de Aldama and Koldo García. The former minister faces accusations that go beyond what Aldama stated and are based on reports from the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard, as is the case with Koldo García, his former advisor. The movements of Judge Puente, of the Supreme Court, remain to be seen in the face of all the statements that affect other members of the Government. For the moment, in the National Court, the judge who continues investigating the bulk of the Koldo case has asked the Civil Guard to verify how much truth there was in his nearly two-hour confession that allowed him to leave prison.
Source: www.eldiario.es
