The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, assured this Thursday in the Senate that he had so far not noticed any irregularities in the contracts of the three friends of his predecessor in power, José Luis Ábalos (Jéssica Rodríguez García, Claudia Montes and Andrea du Torre Maeso), in different public companies of his Ministry.
During his appearance before the commission of inquiry of the Koldo affairPuente thus responded to PP senator Francisco Bernabé Pérez, who asked him if he was considering ordering an audit on the employment contracts of couples and friends that former minister Ábalos “led without any opposition” in different companies of the ministry. .
The popular senator detailed that Ábalos placed Jéssica Rodríguez as administrator, first at Ineco and Tragsatec (a subsidiary of the Tragsa Group, which depends on SEPI). The judicial investigation also proved that the corrupt conspiracy of the Koldo affair He paid Jéssica for several months an apartment in the Plaza de España in Madrid.
Another friend of Ábalos, Miss Asturias 2017 Claudia Montes was hired, also as an administrator, within the Renfe Logirail subsidiary between December 2019 and February 2022.
Finally, Senator Bernabé referred to Ábalos’ “current partner”, Andrea de la Torre Maeso, who was also part of the Logirail staff, between June 2022 and August 2024, when Ábalos was already out of the ministry.
In this regard, Minister Óscar Puente indicated that after the Koldo case broke out, he questioned the public companies involved in these procurement processes, following information published by various media.
However, he stressed, these investigations did not verify any irregularity in the hiring, nor the existence of any suggestion or recommendation from the minister of the time, José Luis Ábalos , so that the ministry’s public companies incorporate these women into their workforce.
Concerning Jéssica Rodríguez, the public company Ineco indicated, in response to the minister’s questions, that she was hired between March 1, 2019 and February 28, 2021 as an administrator to take care of “production circumstances” . Concretely, a technical assistance service for Adif.
“We used the company’s employment pool and CV [de Jéssica] “It was timely,” said the minister, “a personal interview took place and the result was favorable.” Puente also clarified that there was no suggestion “from his predecessor in power that Jéssica be hired.”
“I assure you that If an irregularity had been detected, I would have reported it” said Puente, who also clarified that there was no evidence of any payment from the ministry to Jéssica for accompanying Ábalos on official trips.
During his appearance in the Senate, Óscar Puente explained that he does not know and has never met the commissioner of the Koldo plot, Víctor de Aldama, who declared a week ago before the judge that he had paid bribes tothe former minister Jose Luis Abalos (650,000 euros), to his advisor Koldo Garcia (250,000), to the current organizational secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdan (15,000 euros), and the vice-president’s chief of staff Maria Jesus Montero (25,000).
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