The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the popular accusations have asked the judge to send Koldo García to prison without bail as he assesses the risk of escape. Now it must be Judge Leopoldo Puente who makes the decision. On previous occasions, the instructor has assumed the criteria of Anti-Corruption, which until now had never asked him to imprison the former PSOE minister and current deputy of the Mixed Group and whoever was his advisor.
Puente, instructor of the case opened for the alleged rigging of contracts around the Ministry of Transport during the Ábalos era, has so far rejected the requests made by the popular accusations (grouped under the leadership of the PP) to send the former minister and his former assistant to preventive detention, but the last time he denied that possibility, last October, he warned that there was an “increasing” risk of escape as the trial date approached. 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.
This step taken by the judge has led Anti-Corruption and the popular accusations to present their accusation documents last week, in which they demand very high prison sentences for Ábalos (24 years for the Prosecutor’s Office and 30 for the accusations) and García (19 and a half and 30 years, respectively). And in those writings, both have asked the judge to hold a hearing to review the precautionary measures. The request for high prison sentences is one of the criteria that is usually taken into account to assess the risk of flight, one of the dangers that the law allows to avert with preventive detention.
Judicial sources indicate that, during the hearing held this Thursday, Ábalos asked to speak to say that he was not going to escape because he has no money or anywhere to go. His lawyer, for his part, has said that being placed in preventive detention would mean a violation of the deputies’ right to political representation.
Anti-corruption accuses Ábalos and Koldo García of five crimes: criminal organization, bribery, use of privileged information, influence peddling and embezzlement. In addition to the prison sentences, the public ministry demands for them a fine of more than 3.9 million euros and compensation of 34,477.86 euros on a subsidiary basis between Ábalos and García for Ineco and 9,500.54 euros for Tragsatec, the two public companies in which, supposedly, the plot connected Jésica Rodríguez, Ábalos’ ex-partner. For Aldama, the public ministry is only asking for 7 years in prison by applying the mitigating circumstance of confession, since he has incriminated himself in the case and has provided documentation that, according to Luzón, provides “relevant information” for the investigation.
Until now, the only member of the corrupt plot that had its epicenter in Transportation who has been in prison has been Santos Cerdán, whom the judge sent to jail without the option of bail on June 30. In his case, the instructor did not justify this measure due to the risk of escape, but rather the risk of destruction of evidence, due to his role of “a certain preeminence” within the plot. Cerdán was released after the Civil Guard searched the Acciona headquarters in Bilbao and Madrid and other companies linked to the plot, where they seized electronic devices and documentation.
