The Azvi Group hired Koldo García Izaguirre in 2023 as an advisor and consultant to open new businesses in Latin America. This Sevillian construction company is one of the great entrepreneurs of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA) headed by José Luis Ábalos between 2018 and 2021.
Azvi paid part of former Abalos advisor 6,000 euros per month until his arrest in February 2024, according to the contract signed by the president of the business group Manuel Contreras Caro to which EL ESPAÑOL had access.
Koldo Garcia also had a bonus for every job he did at the “international level”, that is, commission of 0.75% of the contract amount managed up to a maximum of 350,000 euros.
Sources in the case also confirm to this newspaper that Awards received by Andalusian construction company under investigation during Koldo García’s stay at MITMA.
During the three years that Ábalos was transport minister, Azvi alone won awards worth 165 million eurosThe construction company also invested several additional millions from MITMA in UTES along with other companies.
Azvi’s public procurement wins declined significantly in 2023. That year, the construction company earned €19 million, while in 2020 it had invoiced €54 million, according to databases specializing in competitions.
Business with Aldama
In the summary of the Koldo case, it also appears a payment of 18,000 euros made by the president of AzviManuel Contreras Caro, at one of the companies of the mask broker Víctor de Aldama.
Concretely, this transfer was carried out October 9, 2019 to the company Pilot Club Natación de Sevilla and whose corporate purpose was the purchase and sale of real estate assets.
Aldama was one of the co-administrators of this company and, at the same time, he accessed the Ministry of Transport almost daily. On March 17, 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, the mask commission company returned the same amount to Contreras Caro.
According to the company’s version, this payment was a “royalty” for an activity in a swimming club and was later returned to Manuel Contreras. However, this Aldama company was not the one that managed said company and its name was different.
Azvi also clarifies that he hired “the consultant” and “not Koldo”, because working in Latin America is “complicated”.
Despite this, Manuel Contreras said in an interview just two months ago that the construction company’s growth is explained “in part by the explosion of the railway in Mexico” because it participated “in the Maya train, the Mexico-Toluca route or the Isthmus train.”
Regarding the contract with Koldo, sources from the company assured this newspaper that “it is like signing a contract with a large consulting firm.”
On the other hand, this contract with Koldo García included a success bonus for each job done internationally. Therefore, the company of the former advisor of Ábalos is a company that obtains new work and not a typical consulting firm in services.
In the files provided by the UCO in the file summary, they also appear Koldo García’s meetings with Manuel Contreras and with the General Manager of Azvi during his stay at MITMA.
The former adviser met with Manuel Contreras on February 9 and May 28, 2021, when they had dinner at a restaurant in Madrid.
Koldo Garcia’s lawyer requested the release of the pay slips, relating to the months of February and March of this year, which the former company advisor received in the name of his wife and of which he was the only employee.
According to this document, “the trips made by Koldo García in his capacity as a consultant” to different Latin American countries are accredited. Likewise, lawyer Javier Pimentel states that there are “several emails that prove the reality of the company’s activity.”
Koldo García assures that his mission at Azvi was to look for new business sectors in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru or Chile, among other countries. He also emphasizes that this business relationship began two years after leaving the Ministry of Transport.
Last April, Judge Ismael Moreno had already rejected Koldo García’s disposition of these payrolls because “the activity of the consulting firm and the nature of the services provided by the accused” were not proven.
For his part, the prosecutor argued that Koldo García’s relationship with the consulting company Erikapat, which his wife owns, “could be due to an attempt to legitimize in this way the amounts obtained by other means.”
Barcenas case
This is not the first time that Azvi has been linked to a political corruption case, as the construction company was one of the companies mentioned by Bárcenas as PP donors.
In addition, it was shown that Azvi had purchased works of art from the company of the wife of Francisco Álvarez-Cascos, who was head of the Ministry of Public Works between 2000 and 2004.
Manuel Contreras Caro was accused in the “Bárcenas Papers” case of having paid 900,000 euros to the PP. At that time, he was CEO of the company and his father, Manuel Contreras Ramos, was its president.
