Choose your own UCO report and let your imagination run wild. Spanish politics today offers us an example of how parties eat and digest police reports and judicial summaries of corruption investigations. The Popular Party disdains the two reports from the Civil Guard which exclude any criminal act on the part of Begoña Gómez. The PP and some media have already decided that the president’s wife is guilty of the crime of influence peddling, regardless of what emerges from police investigations. Now the full UCO report on the Koldo affair is published and there is nothing more to say. Pedro Sánchez must resign or call elections. Or better yet, die.
The PSOE finds it more difficult to accept such inconsistency. The police report shows the economic relationship of Víctor de Aldama, one of the main people involved in the case, with José Luis Ábalos, former Minister of Transport, who allegedly received gifts in kind: payment of housing rent . for a woman with whom he had relations and the use of a luxury chalet. The accusation of the man who was also number two in the party is only a matter of time. He will have to testify and, based on the evidence provided, he will only be able to do so as an accused before the Supreme Court since he is a Member of Parliament. Ábalos asked to testify voluntarily before the National Court judge in charge of the investigation, but he could decide that, due to the evidence against him, he could only do so as a defendant before the Supreme Court.
From the first day the Koldo affair broke out, the PP directly targeted Sánchez without having any evidence to name the president. At the time it was an interesting deduction, but that’s how parties work. When the PSOE tried unsuccessfully in February to force Ábalos to resign his seat, the opposition had already pronounced its sentence. The “leader of the conspiracy” was the former minister, the “godfather” was Santos Cerdán and the “maximum leader who is informed of everything and makes all the decisions” was Sánchez, according to Elías Bendodo.
Yes, they are delaying UCO doing its job. All you had to do was ask the PP, who already knew everything.
The new revelations will only confirm the line adopted from the first minute. They just need to turn up the thermostat a little. “Sánchez only has two options today,” Senate spokeswoman Alicia García said Friday. “Sánchez must resign or call elections. “He has no way out anymore.” As in the intercepted communications Aldama speaks a few times about “that one” (referring in code to Sánchez), the PP believes it has succeeded. However, García wanted to be imaginative: “It’s not just this one. This is the X of the plot. Politicians are predictable. They generally resort to the great successes of the past.
In an interview, Representative Noelia Núñez wanted to provide context: “All of this happened during the pandemic. While thousands of people were dying in our country, there was someone dropping off bags containing money, 90,000 euros, in Ferraz,” said the PP deputy secretary for mobilization. “The government was planning a plot to supposedly enrich itself. » It should be noted that this figure of 90,000 euros does not appear in the UCO report, but in an interview carried out by a media with a supposed businessman partner of Aldama whose name is not given .
It is curious that these words recall the famous sentence of Pablo Casado about the affairs of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s brother: “The question is whether it is understandable that on April 1, when 700 people died in Spain, you can contract with your sister and receive 286,000 euros in profit for the sale of masks.” In this case, the PP believes that it is possible.
With context, it happens that you only retain what benefits your party.
After his visit to the Vatican, Sánchez had to give explanations. He has the approval of having removed Ábalos from the government some time ago and of having demanded his status as deputy. But what the UCO report says calls into question the version it gave to Congress in 2020 about the visit to Spain of the Venezuelan vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who carried out a night raid at the airport of Barajas.
Then the government said it had limited itself to reacting to an unscheduled visit by a leader who was barred from entering European territory due to EU sanctions. The opposition tried to make it a legal case, but it failed. The Supreme Court responded to a Vox complaint that there was nothing to investigate.
What the police report reveals is that Ábalos informed Sánchez four days before his arrival of the vice president’s private visit and that he would meet her “discreetly.” He spoke of a negotiation with Venezuela so that its government pays its debt to Spanish companies. As an example, he cited the case of Duro Felguera, who had recovered “a significant debt”. Sánchez replied: “Good. »
This word refutes the version proposed at the time, although it is difficult to know what Sánchez was specifically referring to. Was it because Rodríguez came to Spain or because they tried to get Venezuela to pay the companies, which in the case of Duro Felguera ultimately did not happen, according to the police report?
The president needed to know about the sanctions against the Venezuelan government. She says today that when the government learned of Rodríguez’s arrival, it “realized” that she was personally affected by the ban – she had been since 2018 – and the visit was canceled. Ábalos, who obviously had no power in diplomatic matters, was sent to Barajas to inform him. The official version was that Ábalos’ intention was “to avoid a diplomatic crisis”. His contacts with Víctor de Aldama, who had economic interests in this country, indicate the opposite.
The report includes a draft letter prepared by Aldama for Ábalos to invite Delcy Rodríguez to visit Spain in his capacity as organizing secretary of the PSOE, a frankly absurd idea. This is another example of the personal relationships between Aldama and Ábalos that place the former minister in a difficult position to defend.
The businessman’s efforts to ensure that Ábalos can enjoy the use of a villa in Cádiz seem much worse and that he will now have to explain himself to a judge. In exchange for what? The contracts your department awarded during the pandemic will be on the table. The UCO report attributes to the former minister “a relevant and responsible role” in the rewards received by the field and from which Aldama benefited.
To be clear who we are talking about, it should be remembered that Aldama was arrested and imprisoned this week for another scandal, an alleged €182 million fraud on the Treasury.
Sánchez said in Rome that everyone will have to answer for their actions: “Unlike in the past, there will be no impunity. If there is corruption, whoever practices it must pay the price. » He affirmed that “this is a clean government, which has nothing to do with this lack of exemplarity and which borders on corruption”. Something more than borderline, according to what appears in the UCO report.
It’s been a very crazy week. It all started with the decision of the Madrid court to give way to the investigation of Begoña Gómez by Judge Peinado, except in the case of Globalia, which was a serious setback for the government. Later, the PP was hurt by learning that it had approved the legal reform that calculates the prison sentences of ETA prisoners in France. He tried to make a big scandal against the government to hide his negligence, even if in reality the PP deputies in the Justice Commission knew what they were voting for.
The ball is now back in the government’s court. Some wanted to appear relaxed. “The president is very calm, the government is very calm. The Socialist Party is very calm,” said Óscar Puente. Perhaps they will be when they know what Ábalos will declare when his turn comes to sit before a magistrate. In the meantime, you’ll have reason to be nervous.
Note: updated the article with the explanation of the origin of the figure of 90,000 euros that MP Noelia Núñez speaks about.
