This Thursday morning, former Minister José Luis Ábalos presented a complaint to the State Attorney General’s Office against the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard for what he considers was a violation of his fundamental rights, since he was the subject of photographs at the door of his house at the end of a surveillance that the agents had deployed on Koldo García’s brother, Joseba, who was taking him some documents from Alicante to Valencia that were also intercepted. The complaint, which is five pages long and to which ABC has had access, reasons that its fundamental right to the secrecy of communications has therefore been violated.
This information is found in a document that the Civil Guard presented in December of last year before the Central Court of Instruction number 2 of the National Court when the case was still under secrecy and the investigators had Koldo García’s phones tapped and were following up on him. their activities. They had seen him meet with different Transport officials and their organizations and heard him organize for his brother to take some papers to Valencia for Ábalos that he had previously compiled.
The events date back to December 4 of last year. Along the way, Joseba García was stopped by the Civil Guard as if it were a routine road check, but the agents took the opportunity to ask what was inside the envelope he was taking to Valencia. They found three documents: an administrative resolution from the general director of Organization and Inspection of the Ministry of Transport, a resolution of a complaint from Transparency and the report from the Court of Accounts on the mask contracts.
They continued following and the car driven by Joseba García took them to Ábalos’ house. Koldo’s brother went up, stayed a few minutes and then left. The agents photographed the former socialist minister leaving the house and then getting into his car.
All of this is what Ábalos denounces, given that the Civil Guard was aware that the papers were for him and that Joseba García was going to take them on behalf of Koldo and being authorized, they would have required authorization from the Congress of Deputies, like the one now The investigating magistrate of the Supreme Court, Leopoldo Puente, has requested to be able to investigate him and open that envelope with documentation.
«An operation was established […]. The monitoring unit of the Civil Guard did not go after Joseba García, they stayed at the door of my house, carrying out surveillance, waiting for me to come out, photograph me, take note of the details of my vehicle, check its ownership «, Ábalos himself denounced in the press room of the Congress of Deputies after calling all the media to announce his complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office.
The former minister has appeared, ensuring, in turn, that he is “calm” about the Supreme Court’s request and denying any type of strategy agreed upon with the commission agent of the plot – “If anyone is bothered by the coincidence of opinions…” – and even less so with the PSOE —“there are not even conversations,” he said—.
In the opinion of the Mixed Group deputy, who does not consider handing over his minutes and continues to defend his innocence in the Koldo case, the Armed Institute is “clearly violating an elected representative.” In this sense, he says he knows that there is “a lot of noise” and that this issue may be affected by “that serial that one has been experiencing for months”, but, he has denounced, “there is a very serious fact for democracy, for the state of right, which is an investigation outside of judicial authorization.
The question in Congress
In line with this matter, the socialist recalled the time in the summer that the Congress Board stopped a written question that he had addressed to the Government about “whether there has been or exists an extrajudicial investigation” against him. The body then understood that it was an issue that responded solely to exclusively personal interests and asked him to reformulate it.
«The answer I got was very brief. I was told that the Judicial Police only investigates under a court order. “I asked again and I was given the same brief answer,” Ábalos said to the Minister of the Interior, the socialist Fernando Grande-Marlaska, whom he invited to reconsider his answer and explain how long he had been investigated.
Asked in this sense if he believes that his colleague in the Council of Ministers for three years has been spying on him, he rules it out although he believes that the agents who carried out the operation “do not act freely” and “are led and directed by “a person responsible” who, however, he said, is not Marlaska. «He is not of that sensitivity. Furthermore, if he had knowledge, it would disturb him greatly.
Now, he puts this matter in the hands of the State Attorney General and asks him to take steps: to collect the telephone intervention of Koldo Garcia Izaguirre on November 3 and 4, 2023, the aforementioned letter from the UCO and carry out the necessary investigations to clarify the facts.
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