This Thursday, José Luis Ábalos became the first sitting national deputy to go to prison. Supreme Court Judge Leopoldo Puente has sent the former Minister of Transportation and his former advisor to jail for the alleged corrupt plot focused on the purchase of masks during the pandemic, according to official sources from the Supreme Court. The judge has made this decision after the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and popular accusations (led by the PP) demanded it during the hearing held in the high court to review the precautionary measures that weighed until now on the former minister and his assistant (biweekly appearances before the judge, withdrawal of passport and prohibition on leaving Spain). At 6:09 p.m., both entered the Soto del Real prison (Madrid), according to prison sources.
This Thursday’s hearing has ended up confirming the worst omens for Ábalos and the PSOE. Eight days after the former secretary of the Organization Santos Cerdán was released after spending almost five months in preventive detention, his predecessor in that position took the opposite path this Thursday. The judge, who until now had refused to accede to the requests of the popular accusations to imprison the former Minister of Transport, has now taken that step after, for the first time, the Prosecutor’s Office also requested it when considering that there is a risk of flight, one of the requirements established by law to be able to decree preventive detention.
Ábalos and García will enter the Soto del Real prison (Madrid) this Thursday, according to their defense sources. The instructor had already warned that there was an “increasing” risk of escape as the trial date approached; and the oral hearing is already close once Puente proposed on November 3 to put Ábalos, Koldo García and the commission agent Víctor de Aldama on the bench for the alleged corrupt plot focused on the sale and purchase of masks during the covid-19 pandemic. According to the judge, the risk of flight for both of them is now “extreme” and cannot be avoided with the measures that both of them currently had imposed.
The magistrate attributes to the former minister and his former collaborator the commission of the possible crimes of integration into a criminal organization, bribery, use of privileged information, influence peddling and embezzlement. In the case of Ábalos, the judge agrees that the lawyer from the Administration of Justice informs the president of the Congress of Deputies of the resolution because it affects “the personal situation of the accused,” who belongs to the Mixed Group.
Now it will be the Chamber that will have to agree on the consequences of entering preventive detention for Ábalos. Predictably, after receiving the communication from the Supreme Court, he will be suspended from his duties. Article 21 of the Congress Regulations establishes in its second point that deputies will be suspended in their parliamentary rights and duties when, “once the authorization subject to a request has been granted by the Chamber and the indictment order is signed, they are in a situation of preventive detention and for the duration of this.” From that moment, the former minister would stop receiving his salary as a deputy (around 6,000 euros per month) and would no longer be able to vote.
Ábalos arrived at the Supreme Court at 9:12, almost 50 minutes before the time set for the hearing. He got out of a car at the courthouse doors carrying a brown backpack in his hand and walked inside. Judicial sources indicate that, during his appearance before the judge, which lasted around 40 minutes, Ábalos asked to speak to say that he was not going to escape because he has money and nowhere to go. His lawyer has argued that being placed in preventive detention would mean a violation of the deputies’ right to political representation.
The sources consulted indicate that the Anti-Corruption prosecutor has stated that membership in any State power cannot be used “to evade Criminal Law” and that is why, Luzón added, “Justice represents an image with a blindfold on its eyes.” In the prison order, the magistrate warns that the salary that Ábalos receives from the Congress of Deputies does not represent a connection to the country that can be considered sufficient to eliminate the risk of flight. Puente points out that Ábalos will be tried soon and, if convicted, would lose his salary. “It cannot be understood in these circumstances that the receipt of said salary binds him in a particularly stable way to our country,” states the judge.
After hearing the Anti-Corruption decision, the former minister was not allowed to leave the court and waited inside for the judge’s decision for around four hours, during which he was seen smoking in one of the Supreme Court patios. Koldo, who has arrived at the Supreme Court carrying a large backpack, has also assured the judge that he is not going to escape and has alleged the roots that his daughter and her mother, who lives in Benidorm, have for him.
According to sources present at the appearances, the former minister was visibly nervous, while Koldo García seemed to be more wholesome. His lawyer, Leticia de la Hoz, raised a question of jurisdiction at the beginning of the hearing because the National Court is investigating issues such as the purchase of antigen tests during the pandemic, which affect Ábalos (whom, according to the lawyer, Aldama has named several times in his appearance this Thursday) and would “break the continence of the case.” “You cannot divide masks on one side and the PCR on the other if Abalos is in both places, because he is a deputy and has to go to the Supreme Court,” De la Hoz has argued, according to legal sources. The judge has rejected this request.
In the orders issued to motivate his decision, Judge Puente says that it is “time to reconsider” the precautionary measures and points out that there are three reasons that underpin the preventive imprisonment without bail of Ábalos and Koldo. First of all, the processing of both in the case masks on November 3rd. “In the aforementioned order,” he says, “the consistent evidence is detailed that, in the opinion of the instructor, reliably supports that story.”
Secondly, the accusation documents have already been presented in the case and “serious crimes” are attributed to the former minister and former advisor for which the Prosecutor’s Office requests 24 years in prison for Ábalos and 19 and a half years for García, and the popular accusations demand 30 years for both. “The extension of the requested sentences is so relevant that it is commented on by itself,” warns the judge. Puente cites as a third reason that “it cannot be ignored that Ábalos’s status as a prisoner” means that in the event of a “possible conviction” he has no possibility of appeal in the ordinary jurisdiction, “giving rise to an immediate declaration of finality” to compliance with the prison sentence imposed.
To these arguments, the judge adds that Ábalos and Koldo García may have more pending accounts with the justice system because they are also being investigated for the alleged rigging of public works in the part of the case in which Santos Cerdán is involved.
The instructor points out that there is “more than enough evidence of the possible commission of serious criminal acts”, including the possibility that Ábalos “has been able to receive and handle significant amounts of cash” to the point that, for several years, he did not have to withdraw cash from his bank accounts, “which allows us to reasonably infer that he could have sufficient financial resources to undertake and sustain the escape.”
The judge does not focus only on the money, but also on the “more than evident international contacts” of Ábalos. On the one hand, for his public role in the Government as Minister of Transportation and, on the other, for the property that he has in his name in Peru as a founding partner of the Fiadelso foundation. Furthermore, he remembers that “periodically” his son Víctor Ábalos paid him money “apparently” obtained abroad “regardless of whether or not it was a loan,” he emphasizes. “There is no reason to consider that those same funds, in one way or another, could not be provided again,” he emphasizes.
Ábalos had alleged that, if his purpose was to escape, he could have done so within the seven-day window that was given to him to hold this hearing and that his imprisonment only sought a “collaborative statement.” Puente answers that if this hearing was scheduled within a week it was precisely “so that he could articulate his right of defense” and that the precautionary measures so far have been applied “in terms of proportionality.”
