The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, has demanded this Thursday the “resignation” of the PSOE spokesperson in the Madrid City Council, Reyes Maroto, after The Confidential has revealed the WhatsApp messages that she crossed with Víctor de Aldama, the businessman involved in the Koldo case, which were sent on August 5, 2020, when she was in charge of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism of Spain and after the first big wave of coronavirus.
“Reyes Maroto has to resign because he has lied,” Almeida stated in an appearance in Cibeles called after learning of this information. The mayor has announced that if Maroto does not leave, “the Popular Municipal Group is going to present an emergency motion in the plenary session of the City Council to request that she give explanations and, in addition, we are going to propose her disapproval as a councilor.”
In Almeida’s opinion, “the facts known today are very serious because they prove links between the socialist spokesperson in the Madrid City Council and what the Supreme Court calls a criminal organization.” “Reyes Maroto knew Víctor de Aldama. It was not an isolated WhatsApp. There was a relationship of familiarity there. She has to clarify how many contacts she and her ministry have had with the members of that criminal organization,” said the councilor, who insisted that she must “resign” as a councilor because “she is not in a position to continue being spokesperson for the Socialist Party in the City Council, for the links it has with all these people when it was in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Tourism.” “We want to know what conversations she had and the meetings that took place in her ministry when she was minister,” the mayor stressed.
Almeida has also announced that if the socialists “insist” that he go to court to explain why he considers that “there is a corrupt plot within the PSOE and the Government of Pedro Sánchez”, he will expose “this WhatsApp and the meetings in the Ministry of Industry, as well as the statements in which they denied that Aldama had been at the PSOE headquarters.” “I will be able to say in court that the PSOE and the Government were invented to cover up a corruption plot that was taking place there. And Reyes Maroto, by action or omission, has had a part.”
The municipal spokesperson for the PSOE had denied on several occasions having maintained contacts with Aldama. Even last Monday, after the statements in the Supreme Court of the intermediary in the Koldo case, in which he revealed his contacts with the former minister. The socialist leader then assured: “Aldama is currently conveying a whole series of statements and no evidence and, therefore, what he has to do is present evidence, but credible evidence because, as I say, the only two pieces of evidence that until now Now it has been presented, in minutes a minister of the Government of Spain has dismantled them,” said Maroto.
But according to what El Confidencial reveals, the former minister wrote to Aldama to tell him that she had passed her number to the general director of Turespaña, Miguel Sanz, so that he could contact her, according to the screenshots of the published messages, which has left the PSOE municipal spokesperson in a bind.
Shortly after breaking the news, the Madrid councilor joked in his X profile with both pieces of information, with the comment: “Ask and it will be given to you.”
On Tuesday, after Aldama’s statement, Almeida already challenged Maroto to show his “conversions” with the alleged achiever of the ‘Koldo plot’, and asked him to clarify the terms under which they occurred. “We want to know what those WhatsApp people say. We want to know what Reyes Maroto’s relationships were, and I already give him some advice as a lawyer, if you allow me, not as mayor, and that is to collaborate with justice before justice calls him,” the councilor stated before the journalists from the Casa de la Villa. “If you have nothing to hide, the best thing is to do a transparency exercise,” he added.
“A tourism reactivation project”
The former minister has framed these messages in other matters of her ministry that “have nothing to do with corruption” nor with the Koldo case, nor the fuel case where Aldama is involved. “It is a message that is part of an important moment in the Government’s management. We are talking about March 2020, and we were working on de-escalation at the beginning of the economic recovery and particularly on the reactivation of the tourism sector,” said Maroto, adding that it was “a project that was also presented in the Community of Madrid and in the City Council” and that it was sent to Turespaña to evaluate it, “but it did not go ahead,” he clarified.
“I maintain and reiterate what I have always said, that I have absolutely nothing to do with the investigation cases, with the corruption cases that are being investigated. I keep the word that I have always defended and insist, I have nothing to do with these cases of corruption. Mr. Aldama clearly has a strategy of targeting innocent people and unfortunately the Popular Party is acting as his loudspeaker,” the socialist municipal spokesperson concluded.
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