Evidence! We want proof! Nervousness was beginning to spread in certain areas. On Wednesday morning, ABC opened its website with a headline that sounded like a desperate cry: “Aldama has not yet delivered a single piece of evidence of those he promised.” Neither the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, nor the UCO, nor the court in the Koldo case had received anything since his statement two weeks ago, it was said. The commission agent had said that “he had evidentiary material for each of his statements.” And he had stated many things and mentioned several socialist leaders.
Hours later, the tap was turned on and juicy headlines poured out. Maybe someone had taken note of the article. Obviously, the person who could worry the most was former minister José Luis Ábalos. But once again, there was something for everyone. Even with details of a cheap porn movie. A little spice never hurts. We must feed the social networks and the PP deputies. A flat for intimate contacts. How intimate? Let your imagination fly and you won’t get bored.
“The Aldama Papers,” headlined El Mundo on Thursday. Documentary evidence, no less. With that, a judge and a prosecutor can get to work. An explanation of Aldama’s role in his contacts with Ábalos and Koldo García is included. Nothing unexpected. This information is largely found in the reports of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) that already appear in the case. A list of public awards is provided that would have been “predetermined” in favor of some companies. They are those that are underlined in pink (already assigned) or in green (pending assignment). Aldama’s idea is that, if this award was finally made, the person who had made it possible would be paid. So the proof would be in the marker.
“What I have been able to see is a BOE, an investment annex, underlined. The evidence has little value,” said Óscar Puente, Ábalos’s successor in the Transportation portfolio. Even so, he commented that these awards will be reviewed. Just in case. The Government does not want to enrage Ábalos more than necessary – he was already upset by an audit in his former Ministry – but it knows that no one will get rich if they bet on the total innocence of the former minister, who can be said to have been elected. three times by Pedro Sánchez: to be Secretary of Organization of the party, Minister of Development and candidate for Congress in the last elections.
Ábalos denied everything to ABC: “He does not provide a single piece of evidence. A list of works taken from the budget sheet, colored by I don’t know who and with three words below that a graphologist should see. For example, you can say that it is the handwriting of Pedro Sánchez or Felipe VI, and this is being given credibility.” Regarding the 1.9 million apartment on Paseo de la Castellana, which Aldama claims he gave him as a guarantee for the payment of commissions, he says it is a hoax. Aldama got it at an auction and offered it to them, but there was no purchase. The businessman himself acknowledges that the former minister never took office.
There is also a mobile phone involved, one of Aldama’s that is in the possession of the UCO. The alleged perpetrator of bribes indicates that if the device is returned to him, he will decrypt it to facilitate its contents (no one has said that the Civil Guard cannot do it on its own). His lawyer could have provided that solution to the judge, but that would take away the suspense of the game. Thus it is easy to suspect that there will be something else inside that will allow us to find evidence against high-ranking government officials. So far, the Supreme Court judge has not been very impressed.
It sounds similar to what Villarejo has been promising for some time with his encrypted files. The police refuse to hand them over for the logical fear that their content will appear in the media, as has happened before.
In order to give the judge a hard time, Aldama provides screenshots of his cell phone contact list in which senior socialist officials appear, such as former vice president Teresa Ribera or minister Ángel Víctor Torres. That shows you have their phone numbers or one where you could reach them. It would not be strange if Koldo García had provided them. But with that you already get headlines like the one in El Debate: “Aldama’s arsenal of evidence already includes Torres, Montero, Armengol, Marlaska and four former ministers” or that La Razón Give that mobile cover honors.
Splashing is a somewhat vague legal concept. It serves so that the Popular Party can denounce that half the Government is in trouble. It is not necessary to analyze evidence in detail to make these types of accusations.
The prize for the best accusation without evidence is the one that Aldama makes against Torres of benefiting from the rental of an apartment on Atocha Street in Madrid for “meetings of various natures.” If the expression seems too generic and therefore useless, there is no need to worry. Immediately, some media outlets cited sources close to Aldama – that is, Aldama himself – to comment that they were “to maintain intimate dates with women.”
It doesn’t matter if nothing comes of this in the end. The objective is to attack the reputation of a politician with alleged extramarital affairs that will be conveniently aired by the PP in Congress. In fact, they continue talking about Delcy Rodríguez’s suitcases full of gold as if they had existed. You do not need evidence to intervene in the control session.
The magistrate has ordered the UCO to verify what is true in Aldama’s testimony. Apparently that includes the trip to the Dominican Republic of a large group of agents, according to El Mundo, to investigate, among other things, the flights of the Air Force Falcon placed at the disposal of the authorities. All because of a comment from the businessman, who said he saw that plane many times when he was in the Caribbean country.
It is another clue that connects with the constant references to the Falcon that the PP has made in Parliament in recent years. In these conspiracy theories, they have also included Begoña Gómez.
This week, the Murcian senator Francisco Bernabé asked Margarita Robles in the control session: “Who went on those 59 trips to the Dominican Republic? With names and surnames. “To do what, Madam Minister?” Bernabé took the opportunity to sneak in the never-proven hoax about Delcy Rodríguez’s suitcases “that were left illegally in Spain.” Even Aldama has denied that those extra suitcases existed and were full of gold, because their weight would have prevented the plane from taking off.
Robles responded that since March 2021 there have been 39 flights originating in Spain that have had a destination or stopover in that country. In addition to the fact that another reserve plane also flies when the king or the president travels, the majority of these flights (55 counting the two round trips) have been of a technical stopover with the final destination being another country. The flights with direct destination to the Dominican Republic belong to trips of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2021, of Pedro Sánchez for the Ibero-American Summit in 2023, and two of Felipe VI for that summit and for a visit in August of this year.
The investigation of the Koldo case has a few years left if we are to be guided by the length of these judicial investigations. Ábalos still has it as bad as he did a week ago. However, Aldama’s latest delivery with the papers that had been talked about so much has as its first function to make money in the form of tweets and speeches in Parliament. That is its role in the political food chain.
“I wish the Government cared more about access to housing for Spaniards and less about the recreational apartments in Castellana and Atocha for the ministers.” There is Cuca Gamarra giving rise to insinuations. Wallowing in stories about clandestine sex and in an apartment that Ábalos never used is the Popular Party’s idea of opposition. Let others be in charge of proving whether that is true or not.
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