The corrupt plot that colonized the Ministry of Transport in the first months of the pandemic managed to sell more than 20 million masks brought from China for 52 million euros (16 million profit) to the Ministries of Transport and Interior and the communities of the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands. The company Soluciones de Gestión, recommended by Koldo García, main advisor to the then minister José Luis Ábalos, has been litigating for 11 months with the Balearic Islands for the alleged non-compliance in the sale of 1.4 million masks with lower quality than promised. This contract has triggered the toughest confrontation between PP and PSOE. What follows attempts to summarize, based on the material included in the case summary, what happened with that purchase during the worst of the pandemic.
April 2020. The company recommended by the ministry offers a plane full of masks. The Ministry of Transport (supposedly Koldo García, advisor to Minister Ábalos) informed officials of the Balearic Government that there was a company willing to supply millions of masks to the islands. Management Solutions—a firm recommended by Koldo García from which he has allegedly collected large commissions—sent an email to the Ministry of Health on April 25, 2020, offering “a plane full of masks with 1,480,600 units of protection for organic vapors KN 95 single use.” The plane landed in Barajas with material from five Chinese factories: “Putian, Huizhou, Fubian, Haoyun, Leihuo.”
The deputy general director of Purchasing, Antonio Mascaró, ordered analysis a month later of 24 samples of masks from different suppliers (four of them supplied by Management Solutions) to the National Center for Protective Means of the Ministry of Labor. On June 8, the result was sent: of the 24 samples, only nine complied with the regulatory protection and none corresponded to the batch purchased from the company recommended by Koldo García. At that time, the Balearic Health Service ordered the Management Solutions masks to be removed from distribution. The material was stored “pending possible use” until May 5, 2023, when the WHO declared the end of the pandemic.
August 2020. A quality certificate despite defective material. Only two months following the masks were withdrawn, the Management Solutions company asked the Balearic Health Service for a quality certificate. And the same official who sent the samples to Madrid to analyze them and verified that they were defective signed that certificate with an untrue addition: “For the record, at the request of the interested party, without being aware to date of any incident and having effects of participation in public competitions. The explanations for this incomprehensible certificate are vague: “It is a protocol administrative act. At that time it was not yet classified that the material was false and the supplying company denies it.”
September 2022. The Civil Guard enters the Ministry of Health in search of the contract with the denounced company. The Civil Guard visited the Balearic Health Service and requested the entire Management Solutions contract, a company that the Prosecutor’s Office was investigating following the complaint filed by the PP of Madrid. “No one informed the Minister of Health, much less the President Francina Armengol, of the registry. They never knew that it was an Anti-Corruption investigation. It was one of many visits that the Civil Guard made to collect different types of documentation for complaints,” say collaborators of that Executive.
March 2023. The company’s anger at the socialist Government of the Balearic Islands: “It is untimely and inappropriate.” On March 20, 2023, the general director of Health of the Balearic Islands, Manuel Palomino, informed the company Soluciones de Gestión that having detected that they did not comply with the technical requirements, “the appropriate measures will be taken in order to compensate. to the Health Service of the situation that has caused this event.” Just four days later, the company responded: “The KN95 masks supplied were in accordance with what was agreed upon by both parties and perfectly complied with the applicable administrative requirements. “It is completely out of time and inappropriate that, within the framework of an emergency contract, we are informed almost three years later of alleged defects in the supply carried out on the basis of an analysis of FFP2 masks that were not those supplied.” The Balearic Government at that time maintains that many claim files for other different matters were initiated those days with a similar delay due to multiple factors, among them the work overload caused by the expansion of the coronavirus during 2020 and 2021. On July 6 2023, the deputy director of the Purchasing Central, Antonio Mascaró – the same official who sent the masks to Madrid for quality analysis and also signed two months later at the company’s request a certificate that the service had been satisfactory – signs at 11:42 the proposal that begins “partial resolution due to culpable breach of contract”, claiming 2,626,584 euros from Management Solutions.
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November 2023. Cueto: “We have what we have… some sons of bitches.” The company behind the corrupt plot moves to deactivate the claim. They present allegations to the Balearic Administration, now in the hands of the PP, and put pressure on Koldo García, the advisor to Minister Ábalos who got them the contract. Íñigo Rotaeche, head of Management Solutions, calls Juan Carlos Cueto, head of the group that controls his company, in November 2023 to worry regarding the claim made by the Socialist Government and that the PP Executive must resolve.
Inigo Rotaeche: In the end it is an unfair act, because they have used… they have spent three years… it is an unfair act… to get rid of all possible responsibility…
Juan Carlos Cueto: We have what we have… sons of bitches.
Inigo Rotaeche: Because it is an unfair act to issue a resolution three years later when the results were available three years earlier.
The businessmen censure the management of the previous Government, but they are working to ensure that the new Executive does not go ahead with the claim. And in December, they pressure Koldo García to make arrangements with his friends. Minister Ábalos’s advisor promises to speak with PP leaders to fix the problem. But the investigation has not detected – despite the fact that they had beacons on Koldo García’s motorcycle, tapped his phones and controlled the places he visited – not a single piece of evidence that the advisor contacted PP leaders or Balearic officials to neutralize the claim.
December 2023. “Everything is on the right track, there is no need to see anyone.” The Balearic PSOE denounces that the PP Government has let the claim lapse. The Balearic Executive denies this but announces that it will initiate criminal proceedings to recover the money. Koldo García’s conversations with the affected businessmen suggest that the procedure is going to decline: “I have discussed it with the ministry where I worked before and they tell me that this legal path has none. That is, none but none.” In another conversation with Cueto on December 7, he reassures him once more: “Everything is on the right track, there is no need to see anyone.” The businessman asks: “And good way, what does it mean? “They’re not going to do anything?” And Koldo García answers: “That’s what I interpret.”
The investigation has not been able to prove, for the moment, whether anyone in the plot contacted PP leaders, nor that former Minister Ábalos mediated to have the claim withdrawn. There is also no evidence in the summary that illegal commissions were paid to political leaders or officials of the Balearic Administration.
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