The National Court is looking for the brain of the Koldo case. Judge Ismael Moreno has summoned Juan Carlos Cueto to testify this Wednesday, one of the businessmen involved in the network dedicated to the alleged payment of irregular commissions to obtain mask contracts in the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. The complaint from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office places Cueto at the top of the plot dismantled last week, and gives him a key role alongside Víctor de Aldama, the president of Zamora CF, also arrested during the Civil Guard operation. The public ministry details that both are behind Soluciones de Gestión y Apoyo a las Empresas SL, the company used to obtain the awards.
Since the scandal broke out, the figure of Koldo García, the former advisor of the former socialist minister José Luis Ábalos, has grabbed the main headlines in the press. And his name has even served to popularly name the cause as Koldo case. However, researchers give it a simple intermediate role. Above him would be the true ideologues of the plot: those people who thought of contracting with the Ministry of Transportation; that they chose Koldo García as the ideal person to “make their path easier”; and that they agreed to pay commissions to be able to execute their plans.
In this sense, in the absence of proving who did what, the evidence hangs over Juan Carlos Cueto, summoned this Wednesday at the National Court; and regarding Víctor de Aldama, who refused to testify before the judge on Thursday, who released him with precautionary measures – he must appear in court every 15 days, his passport was taken away and he is prohibited from leaving Spain. The Prosecutor’s thesis is that De Aldama learned that Transportes needed to acquire medical supplies and, seeing the opportunity to get rich, decided to contact Cueto, with whom he had already done business before. “Given the [el presidente del Zamora] “He did not have the necessary human and material resources, as well as sufficient financing to undertake the project alone, he would have contacted the Cueto group,” states the complaint from the public ministry.
Thus, while millions of Spaniards locked themselves in their homes and lived in fear of a virus that left tens of thousands of people dead in the country, those involved agreed to use Management Solutions as a front company. Neither of them appear in the records of this company. Íñigo Rotaeche, also accused, is his attorney. But this, in the words of the public ministry, stands as one of Cueto’s “trusted men”, who would control said company in practice.
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Cueto is also an old acquaintance of the Prosecutor’s Office. He belongs to the family that manages the Cueto Group. In fact, Anticorruption maintains that he “leads” said business conglomerate, although he officially left the organizational chart following his involvement in the Defex case. A summary that is still pending trial and for which the public ministry is asking him for 50 years in prison. In these investigations, he is also accused, precisely, of paying “illegal commissions” to Angolan authorities and officials to obtain public contracts for the supply of weapons and police material – concessions that, due to the lack of controls, they allegedly took advantage of to divert their pockets part of the money obtained through the awards.
In it Koldo case, the investigating judge Ismael Moreno explains that it was Aldama, who “enjoyed a certain prevalence” in Transportation, who “would have influenced the department” to obtain the contracts under suspicion: “Aldama and Koldo García, advisor to the head of the ministry at that time , they maintained a direct and personal connection.” Both had met in Mexico, on the occasion of an official visit by Minister Ábalos to the region. With these operations concocted during the pandemic, the magistrate calculates that Cueto obtained a profit of 9.6 million euros; and Aldama, 5.5 million.
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