A basic outline of the plot of the masks in the Koldo case would have so far placed José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García within the Ministry of Transport, and the middleman Víctor de Aldama outside, with interests in several companies, including Soluciones de Gestión, which was awarded the two million-euro mask contracts currently being tried in the Supreme Court. After the sixth session of the trial, Aldama’s name would be as embedded in the ministry as Ábalos and his former advisor. Two witnesses with very different perspectives, the former president of Adif and a civil guard assigned to Transport, have stated that the businessman moved freely and at any time in the most restricted area of the building. He was so embedded that a former senior official of Ports who requested Aldama’s endorsement for the purchase of four million masks claimed he asked him because he thought the businessman “was in the ministerial part helping organize planes.”
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The close of the second week of the trial of the former minister, his former advisor, and the middleman who supposedly partnered with them to do business has helped fit several pieces of the puzzle together. The most anticipated testimony of the day was that of Isabel Pardo de Vera, former president of Adif, charged in the part of the case investigated by the National Court for the hiring in that company of Jésica Rodríguez, Ábalos’s ex-partner, and which focuses on public works contracts. She could have exercised her right not to testify, but chose to do so to clear herself of all responsibility both in that hiring and in the purchase of masks by Adif, for which she is not yet under investigation but has already been pointed out by the Civil Guard and may end up being so.
The former senior official began visibly nervous, with a trembling voice, and offering more explanations than the chief Anti-Corruption prosecutor, Alejandro Luzón, who opened the interrogation, requested. The former Secretary of State for Transport detailed the meetings she had with her team when the ministry tasked her with buying five million masks, how tasks were distributed, how the risks and benefits of each contractor were analyzed… concluding that she did not make any of the decisions under suspicion.
The number of masks was given to her by a ministerial order, and she found the choice of the company Soluciones de Gestión when she entered the platform to sign the contract, she stated. In any case, she received “no instruction” to buy from that company, but thought it was a correct decision because it was the company with which Puertos del Estado had contracted a week earlier and the first masks were to arrive within hours, which was a guarantee.
Apparently less nervous as the interrogation progressed, the former president of Adif also distanced herself from the hiring of Jésica Rodríguez, although she admitted—she could not deny it because there are messages included in the case—that Koldo García sent her the resume and asked her to move it. “Let the people at Ineco call the girl to start the procedures because, if not, Jose will cut my balls off,” wrote the advisor, according to WhatsApp messages found by the Civil Guard on his phone.
Pardo de Vera stated that she forwarded the resume to the president of Ineco but without any commitment or pressure. “I never conveyed that as a demand, just passing it on to the presidency of Ineco and saying: ‘This has arrived from the minister’s office. At your discretion. If there are vacancies… you consider it. I did not know this lady.” The former president of Adif “categorically” denied the testimonies heard at the trial that claimed she asked that Rodríguez “not be bothered” and assured she was the last to find out that she was Ábalos’s partner. When she found out, she said, she called the minister and told him that her hiring at Ineco could not be extended. “The minister told me ‘whatever you do is well done’ and I heard no more about this lady.”
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The former president of Adif was the first witness to put on the table, without anyone specifically asking her about it, that Aldama’s presence in the ministry was striking for its regularity. She stated that she saw him many times in the most restricted area of the building, almost always accompanied by Koldo, even in Ábalos’s office at times when he was not there. “It surprised me that a person who did not belong to the ministry was so often there. It struck me because of my experience with other ministers.” She told the minister, she says, and he “took note.” And from then on, she said, she saw him less.
Another witness who warned of the same strange and constant presence of the businessman in the ministry maintained, however, that these visits did not stop until Ábalos and Koldo were dismissed. Civil guard José Luis Rodríguez, also charged in the National Court for his alleged link to the mask business, stated that Aldama could be seen entering the ministry at all hours without anyone stopping him. “He parked in the authorities’ parking lot. I couldn’t. It’s the only case I know where someone who is not an authority of the Ministry of Transport had access there,” the agent illustrated with some astonishment.
The businessman’s influence in the ministry, one of the pillars of the investigation, was also confirmed this Wednesday with the testimony of Álvaro Sánchez Manzanares, secretary general of Ports, also charged in the National Court. Prosecutor Luzón asked him why he sent the businessman by email the first order signed by Ábalos to buy four million masks accompanied by the following message: “Let me know.”
“Aldama was the one informing me about the logistics,” the former senior official stated. To which the prosecutor added: “And the next thing is that a new order arrives with eight million masks instead of four…” The witness tried to explain that, as far as he remembers, Aldama told him they could only send eight million to Spain and the prosecutor seemed ready to drop the subject without conviction—“well, let’s leave it”—but ended up insisting. “Why does he ask a company?” “We didn’t know it was a competitor. Aldama did not appear in the documentation of Soluciones de Gestión. For us, he was in the ministerial part. He had a close relationship with the Ministry and was helping coordinate the planes.”
