The Supreme Court has confirmed Judge Leopoldo Puente’s decision to divide the investigation into alleged contract rigging into two. The Appeals Chamber has rejected the appeal presented by Ábalos against that measure, which in practice allowed the judge to terminate the instruction of the first piece, focused on the purchase of masks during the covid-19 pandemic, which precipitated the preventive imprisonment of Ábalos and his former advisor, Koldo García. The magistrates consider the defense’s complaint “unacceptable”, which maintains that the former minister cannot be incriminated in the alleged corrupt plot and that the investigators have been obtaining information “on facts unrelated to what was being investigated, as a result of the use of exceptional investigative techniques” such as the interception of communications and the “indiscriminate” seizure of documentation.
The instructor’s intention in dividing the case into two pieces was to close the investigation of the first part as soon as possible so that the trial could be held in the coming months, and leave the second part open, focused on the alleged rigging in the awarding of public works, whose investigation began much later and, predictably, will be more complex.
Puente confirmed his plans a few days after dividing the case and proposed trying Ábalos, Koldo García and the commission agent Víctor de Aldama for alleged irregularities in the purchase of masks in the worst weeks of the pandemic. This step led the accusations to present their requests for prison terms for those investigated (between 24 and 30 years in prison for the former minister, between 19 and a half and 30 years for his former advisor and seven years for Aldama), which led the instructor to the “extreme” risk of escape.
In the order issued this Wednesday, the Appeals Chamber reproaches the former minister’s defense for not having focused its appeal on the division of the case, but rather on questioning whether there is sufficient evidence to incriminate Ábalos. Among other issues, the former socialist leader’s lawyer complained that the judge gave credibility to the information that businessman Aldama has been providing, on which part of the investigation is based. “There will be time to evaluate their statements and their agreement with the rest of the evidentiary material that is accumulating,” the court notes.
The Appeals Chamber has yet to rule on the judge’s decision to propose putting the three investigated on the bench, which has been appealed by the defenses. The magistrates plan to begin studying the appeals this Friday.
