The judge in charge of the investigation into the “Koldo case” at the National Court, Ismael Moreno, asked the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda for a certified copy of the internal audit that revealed a ministerial order signed by former minister José Luis Ábalos on the first purchase from the key company in the field where the quantity of masks was doubled, going from four to eight million in “only 38 minutes.”
In an order collected by Europa Press, the president of the Central Court of Instruction Number 2, Ismael Moreno also demands “the indication of the officials who carried out its preparation, charging the Judicial Police Unit in charge of carrying out this procedure. present investigation.”
This report, presented to the Senate by Minister Óscar Puente, indicates that a day before this decree, on March 19, 2020, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, an estimate of four million masks had been made for the first 15 days of the first state of alarm. It was a day later that Ábalos signed a new resolution to double that number, according to the report.
On the other hand, Judge Moreno also asked the prosecution to clarify whether it was appropriate to summon the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, to testify in the case, at the request of the Liberum association, which acts as popular prosecution.
Former senior officials investigated
In another judgment, the magistrate accepts the association’s letter which, among other points, emphasizes that Puente’s statement is necessary and useful for the procedure in which several senior officials of his department are being investigated.
Liberum, in particular, recalled that Puente had stressed that the dismissal of the Undersecretary of State for Transport, Jesús Manuel Gómez, had occurred “due to the loss of confidence in him due to his procedural situation as an investigator in the present investigation procedure.”
In this context, the association requests the testimony of the minister to testify on “the information and knowledge that the accused persons had shared with him or to which he could have had access, regarding the facts that are the subject of this preliminary procedure and its extensions”, in particular the connection of Gómez García” and also of the former chief of staff of the ADIF Michaux Miranda, whose dismissal was also announced last Friday.
The alleged conspiracy that paid commissions to obtain rewards for the sale of masks during the pandemic is named after Koldo García, who was an advisor to the then Minister of Transportation, José Luis Ábalos. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office attributes the alleged crimes of criminal organization, money laundering, bribery, crimes against the Public Treasury and influence peddling.
