Francisco Salazar will have to appear in the investigation commission of the Koldo case in the Senate shortly, before the Aragon elections on March 8, as confirmed by sources from Genoa. The Popular Party, with an absolute majority in the upper house, summoned Salazar that day, expelled from the PSOE last July against whom he was one of Pedro Sánchez’s closest collaborators during the campaign in which he was re-elected general secretary of the socialists in 2017 and who since then had played a key role in Ferraz and La Moncloa. The investigative commission to which Salazar has been called is investigating the alleged corruption plot in which the former general secretaries of the PSOE José Luis Ábalos and Santos Cerdán are accused. The Popular Party requests his interrogation because it considers it as another “case of Sanchismo cover-up” and so that he “tells what he knows” about the alleged network.
The PP is holding a convention in which dozens of national deputies and senators, as well as regional parliamentarians and senior party officials gather over the weekend. Alberto Núñez Feijóo has summoned his people at the very beginning of the year to show muscle against Sánchez and stage his rearmament before the electoral cycle that begins next February 8 in Aragón. “An electoral and judicial road of the cross awaits Sánchez,” warned the general secretary of the PP, Miguel Tellado, at the opening of the event. “For Sánchez, Parliament has become a hindrance,” he added.
The commission’s Board meets this Monday, where they will set the date for Salazar’s appearance, which will take place before February 8. The agenda has been considered since the interrogation of the president’s former collaborator will take place just a few days before the polls open in Aragón, where the PSOE candidate is Pilar Alegría, former spokesperson for the Government. The former minister also apologized in public after the digital newspaper Article 14 In November, a photograph of Alegría sharing a meal with Salazar in a restaurant was revealed. Days later, the PSOE filed complaints against him for the delay in processing it.
The object of the investigation commission to which the PP has called Salazar are “the contracts, licenses, concessions, aid and other operations of the Government and the public sector, related to the intermediation of Koldo García Izaguirre”, the former advisor of the former minister José Luis Ábalos, and “with the other people linked to the plot investigated in the Operation Delormeand with respect to the alleged crimes related to corruption that have a relationship, direct or indirect, or connection with them.” Salazar has been denounced within the PSOE for sexual harassment, but the Popular Party cites him in this commission because they consider it another “case of cover-up of sanchismo” having been a close collaborator of Sánchez since the primaries in which Ábalos, García and Santos Cerdán were also involved.
The person who did not appear at the commission last Thursday was precisely Ábalos, who is in provisional prison in Soto del Real, despite the fact that the PP had requested his appearance that day. The Supreme Court denied the summons considering that. The parliamentary group studies the decision and does not rule out reformulating it again.
