Aldama appeared before Fuel entrepreneurs as “narrow government contact”

In one of the reports of the cause of the National Court in which Aldama is investigated for being, allegedly, of a criminal organization of VAT fraud of the hydrocarbons, it is stated that he told the other defendant accused Claudio Rivas, who would later be his partner, that “he had capacity and availability to help him in what he wanted.”

It was the businesswoman Carmen Pano, who also is among those investigated by the Judge Santiago Pedraz In the investigation that led Aldama to pretrial detention, which echoed the businessman’s words during a meeting that she witnessed.

According to Pano to the Civil Guard, Aldama, whom he knew for a long time, told him the summer of 2020 that he needed to find someone who invested in his restaurants in the four towers of Madrid, for which he had financial problems. She contacted Claudio Rivas, an entrepreneur of the Hydrocarbons sector, with whom they held a meeting between the end of August and the beginning of September of that year.

Always according to Pano’s version, in that meeting «Víctor de Aldama told him to Claudio Rivas that maintained very close contacts with the current government and that had capacity and availability to help you in what it required ».

About 15 days after that meeting, according to Pano’s statement, Rivas told him that “regardless of that he was interested in investing in restaurants” for which Aldama I needed a million and a half In euros, “since he wanted to invest in the hydrocarbons sector, he was going to propose to Víctor de Aldama if he wanted to participate and intermediate with his contacts before the Ministry since the procedures to obtain the license to operate are usually delayed between 12 and 18 months.” The interest of Rivas, according to the businesswoman, was “to get the operator license for the company Villafuel”, and thought that Aldama, for that link he said he had with the government, would help him achieve it.

In January 2021, also according to Pano’s statement, Aldama, Rivas and she went to Ministry of Industrywhere they held a meeting with “two technicians” in which Koldo García, advisor to Minister Ábalos, and the then chief of cabinet of Minister Reyes Maroto, Juan Ignacio Díaz Bidart was also.

For the Civil Guard There is evidence that the presence of Koldo García at the headquarters of the Ministry of Industry supposed the possibility of the treatment of the government that Claudio Rivas expected.

The Pano businesswoman related the search for the Rivas license with the payment of the holiday housing in the Alcaidesa (Cádiz) with a monthly cost of 2,500 euros of which Minister Ábalos enjoyed, according to the open cause against him in the Supreme, until his cessation, in July 2021.

At that time, and knowing that “the intermediation in the ministry was unsuccessful,” according to the Civil Guard, “the criminal organization acted through Have Got Time -the company of Carmen Pano and his daughter through which the rent of the house was paid- sending a brief of contract resolution to the former minister, urging him to leave the housing of the Alcaidesa before the default of the rent, infining that, when ceasing the influence that the former minister could exert, the interest of the criminal organization in him declined ».

Cross interests

On the dates on which the researchers place the alleged VAT fraud of the hydrocarbons and the linking of Aldama and Rivas, between March 20 and July 2021, Minister Ábalos and his advisor, Koldo Garcíathey would have been beneficiaries, supposedly, of Aldama payments, a fact that is investigated in the Supreme Court.

From what was addressed by the Civil Guard in both causes, a search for interest and reciprocal benefits. While Aldama was looking for business and influence, Ábalos would have paid for the entrepreneur and his environment, a standard of living that could not pay for his salary as a government member.

For two years, according to the signs collected in the case educated by Judge Leopoldo Puente against the Agorado, the partner of Aldama, Alberto Escolano, would have paid the monthly payments of an apartment in the central Plaza de España for the extramarital couple of Ábalos, Jessica Rodríguez.

The judge also investigates the placement of women in two public companies, INECO (Transport Dependent) and Tragsa (of agriculture) without the need for him to go, not even, to her job, as she declared in a judicial headquarters.

In the cause of the Supreme, there is also a contract of sale of an apartment in the Paseo de la Castellana Between Aldama and Ábalos that was finally not signed but, which according to the businessman, would have been another way to pay the politician the favor of favor to give the companies he represented.