The head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, Alejandro Luzón, has asked the Supreme Court to keep former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos in provisional prison considering that the “” escape that led to his entry into the Soto del Real prison (Madrid) on November 27 has not only not disappeared but has increased due to the proximity of the trial for alleged rigging in the purchase of masks during the coronavirus pandemic.
Legal sources consulted by EL PAÍS indicate that Luzón has ratified his position during the appeal hearing that was held this Thursday in the Supreme Court to study the appeals presented by the former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE and his former advisor, Koldo García, demanding his release.
the prosecutor reiterated that the proximity of the trial, scheduled in a few months, and the penalties demanded, which reach 30 years in prison, had increased the risk of escape.
Luzón also argued that “the flow of evidence has not stopped growing with each new information available,” recalling not only the piece related to the alleged irregularities in the purchase of medical supplies during the covid-19 crisis but also the one that deals with alleged rigging of public works, still in the investigation phase.
For Luzón, the facts about to be judged constitute crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, influence peddling, embezzlement, bribery and use of privileged information. He considers that Ábalos, whom he profiled as the “boss” of the plot, should be sentenced to 24 years in prison, while García is interested in 19 and a half years.
In his writing, the prosecutor also wanted to make it clear that “the accusatory story is not based on the word of Víctor de Aldama”, a businessman who would have acted as the organizer of the alleged plot, but has been corroborated during the course of the investigations. , has led the Prosecutor’s Office to ask for only 7 years in prison for him.
The instructor of Koldo case In the Supreme Court, Leopoldo Puente, sent them to prison appreciating the same “extreme risk” as Luzón, while recalling that investigations have revealed that they could have large amounts of hidden money and international contacts that would facilitate their escape.
The legal sources consulted by this newspaper indicate that Ábalos’s defense, which former prosecutor Carlos Bautista has been in charge of for the last time, after renouncing his defense due to “contractual discrepancies”, has also been ratified.
He claims that his entry into Soto del Real responds to “an unreasonable use of the law,” based on “suppositions and speculations not supported by evidence.”
Ábalos’s defense argued that “those gigantic amounts of hidden money” attributed to him “do not appear anywhere”, emphasizing that, in any case, the average effective income that he would have made during the period investigated (2014-2024) would amount to about 500 euros per month, based on reports from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard.
The former ministerial advisor, for his part, directly defends that the unjustified increase in assets that the UCO estimates at 317,500 euros would actually be 98,421 euros and would correspond to “the family’s savings capacity.”
