Ábalos: “I have no money or anything abroad. Nor through third parties”

When the former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos is asked if he hides a fortune abroad due to the collection of illegal commissions, as investigated by the Civil Guard, the current deputy of the Mixed Group denies it: “I find the question very funny. I have no money, no assets or anything. Neither directly nor through third parties,” the one who was until 2021 one of the heavyweights of the PSOE and the Government of Pedro Sánchez responds by telephone to EL PAÍS.

The investigation of Delorme casean alleged corrupt network that colonized the Ministry of Transport that he directed between 2018 and 2021, gives José Luis Ábalos (Torrent, Valencia, 64 years old) a nuclear role in the criminal plot that invoiced public administrations for more than 53 million euros in awards of medical supplies during the worst of the pandemic.

The deputy denies having profited from these businesses. “What if I have funds in the Dominican Republic? What do I have to do with all that?” he responds bluntly regarding the open line of investigation that follows the trail of the alleged commissions paid in the Caribbean country by the businessman Víctor de Aldama.

Ábalos will testify next Thursday, December 12, as a defendant in the Supreme Court for this case. He assures that among the electronic devices handled by Civil Guard investigators there is “intimate” information about him and denounces his defenselessness: “My privacy is destroyed.” The former minister regrets because he feels that the open investigation has deprived him of his “right to privacy and honor”; believes that his presumption of innocence is not respected and regrets that the embryonic Koldo case has transmuted into the Ábalos case.

The judicial investigation is dispersed by a tangle of proceedings regarding the rescue of Air Europa with loans of 475 million approved by the Council of Ministers in 2020; about the payment of 90,000 euros for the luxury apartment that an ex-partner of the politician occupied for a time or about the glassy trip to Spain of the Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez.

The former minister feels like a victim of a political operation whose main piece to defeat is the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. “My accusation was predetermined. They have always investigated me, even when I was under arrest,” he points out. And he frames the arrests of the rest of the members of the plot in a strategy to criminally corner him. “With a Víctor de Aldama [empresario, expresidente del Zamora C. F. y presunto cabecilla de la trama] and a Koldo García [asesor del exministro] “You don’t make a cause like this,” he says.

Ábalos assures that he can dismantle the accusations of Aldama, who maintained before the judge that he had given the former minister up to 250,000 euros and 100,000 euros more to his advisor, Koldo García, as compensation for the business he did – with a profit of almost six million euros—in its intermediation for the sale of masks. “Cash payments [de comisiones ilegales] “They cannot be proven, because they did not exist,” he responds.

Regarding Aldama’s strategy of denouncing multiple corruptions in his relations with the socialist administration, the one who was one of the most powerful men in the Sánchez Government interprets the businessman’s motivations: “In general, everything he says [Aldama] It’s a lie. Some things are true. For a story to be credible, you always have to tell some truth.”

The former number three of the PSOE is very critical of the decision of the judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno to release the businessman Aldama after he confessed to the alleged payment of bribes to the former minister, Koldo and several officials of the Executive and the PSOE . “They needed this accusation that Aldama makes. “His testimony is key to fueling the media noise,” he denounces.

Ábalos affirms that he does not know anything about the hydrocarbons businesswoman, Carmen Pano, who declared to The Spanish having gone in October 2020 to the second floor of the Madrid headquarters of the PSOE on Ferraz Street to deliver two bags with 90,000 euros in cash. The former minister questions Pano’s claim that, as a criminal shield, he recorded the alleged delivery of cash before a notary to obtain political favors. “Yeah [la empresaria] left a notarial record of his visit to Ferraz, it was an irregularity. The notary is obliged to report a crime and cannot draw up a report,” explains the former leader.

The former minister also denies that he planned to receive a luxury home valued at 1.9 million euros owned by Aldama as consideration for the Ministry of Transport’s awards to construction companies, as stated in a contract presented by the businessman in the Supreme Court as evidence. of the alleged bribery. “It’s all a lie. There was a tenant in the apartment. I don’t remember if I signed that contract. But it was impossible to materialize [el acuerdo]”he explains. Aldama’s defense provided in the high court an alleged lease contract with an option to purchase a property on Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid that would allegedly pass into the hands of the former minister, who never occupied the home.

Regarding the bribes that companies supposedly paid for the rigged awarding of works in the Ministry of Transportation, Ábalos now encourages the construction companies pointed out by Aldama to denounce the businessman. Two of these companies have already announced that they are studying criminal actions.

Ábalos also denies having enjoyed a free chalet in La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz) supposedly acquired by the plot when he was Minister of Transport (2020-2021). “I can prove that I have a rental contract [de la propiedad]”, that I have paid the monthly payments from my account, that they evicted me, and that there are two Treasury inspections in 2022 and 2023 that prove this,” he indicates.

When asked about his political horizon in the face of Víctor de Aldama’s accusations, former Minister Ábalos, who abruptly left the Government in 2021 and today occupies a seat in the Mixed Group, feels amortized. He also regrets that he has been abandoned by his people. “I am disposable material,” he acknowledges. “It hasn’t mattered to get my family involved,” he adds. The former head of the socialist apparatus that led the party presents himself as now as the target of a “media sewer” that markets his private life. “Can you imagine what would happen if we accessed the personal WhatsApp of everyone involved in the case? With me anything goes. Even the smallest thing,” he concludes.