The interrogations of the Civil Guard in the Koldo case: "Contradiction" of the current Undersecretary of Transport and "pressure from Ábalos" to Adif

Carlos Segovia

Gema Peñalosa Madrid

Madrid

Updated Thursday, March 7, 2024-12:52

The interrogations carried out by the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard in the so-called 'Koldo case' include new developments that affect current and past senior government officials.

The researchers detect "contradictions" in the version of the current undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport,

Jesús Manuel Gómez

, and also "pressure" from the previous minister

José Luis Ábalos

to the then president of Adif,

Isabel Pardo de Vera

, to accelerate an award that favored the company of the plot.

On the one hand,

Jesús Manuel Gómez

, undersecretary since 2018, declared as a witness to the UCO last month, according to the documents to which EL MUNDO has had access, that he limited himself to communicating to State Ports the ministerial order for the purchase of eight million masks, but that "did not participate directly or indirectly in the adjudication of the files."

That is to say, he did not intervene in the fact that this 20 million euro contract would be for Management Solutions, the company involved in the plot.

However

, "at this point a contradiction occurs in the police opinion

," states the UCO in its report.

It is based on the fact that the then Secretary General of State Ports,

Álvaro Sánchez Manzanares

, also declared before the Civil Guard as a witness that his interlocutors in the Ministry, including Jesús Manuel Gómez himself, informed him that "there was a supplier who had a stock available of eight million masks and they wanted to know how the procurement was going to be carried out.

At this point, the UCO considers it evident that the choice of this company is made in the Ministry and that Puertos del Estado is limited to executing it.

This was also confirmed by the president of Ports

, Vicente Toledo

.

According to the UCO, it is contradictory that the undersecretary denies having known that the supplier was Soluciones de Gestión and having intervened in the award, when he was one of those who informed Sánchez Manzanares about its existence.

Minister

Óscar Puente

has so far confirmed the undersecretary, but this Tuesday he dismissed Sánchez Manzanares, whom investigators consider to be the

Alvarito

related to the plot, for the lie published by EL MUNDO this Monday in a letter from Puertos del Estado to the National Fraud Investigation Office (Onif).

As for

Isabel Pardo de Vera

, former Secretary of State for Transport and president of Adif in 2020, she then awarded Soluciones de Gestión 12 million euros in masks, a few days after the State Ports order from the same company.

Pardo de Vera declared to the UCO that he did not receive an express order to hire Soluciones de Gestión, but he did "

receive pressure from the Ábalos Ministry of Transportation and his cabinet

so that said award would be carried out as quickly as possible, and the availability of masks out as quickly as possible."

The faster the award, the less possibility of seeking other offers.

Pardo de Vera does not specify whether Koldo García

, Ábalos' advisor at the time, intervened

in this case, but describes him as someone who exerted constant pressure: "

Koldo was very insistent

and contacted her on numerous occasions, always on behalf of the Minister of Transportation (Ábalos )".

Pardo de Vera also reveals that the commission agent and

organizer

of the plot

Víctor de Aldama,

although he had no theoretical role in the Ministry, was a regular at the Department.

The president of Adif assures that she saw him on several occasions "meeting with Koldo" and that she knew that his brother was "the minister's bodyguard or driver."