Neither Judge Ismael Moreno, instructor of the Koldo casenor did the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office consider it necessary to take a statement from businessman Javier Hidalgo. However, one of the accusations insisted and managed to get the National Court to order the magistrate to summon him as a witness. This Thursday, Hidalgo, former CEO of Globalia, has finally appeared to testify about his relationship with the alleged members of the plot that supposedly rigged million-dollar contracts in the purchase of masks by the Ministry of Transport and other public bodies at the worst moment of the covid pandemic, in 2020. He has denied any irregularities and has assured that his company did not pay commissions in exchange for obtaining contracts.
The reason for Hidalgo’s summons was that planes from his business group, including Air Europa, were responsible for bringing part of the purchased medical supplies from China, and that the investigation has detected payments from Globalia to the company of one of the suspects, businessman Víctor de Aldama. Hidalgo left the courthouse after answering the questions posed to him by the accusations for just under an hour – neither Judge Moreno nor the prosecutor asked any. According to sources present at the interrogation, the executive insisted on ruling out that neither he nor the company of which he was then CEO had paid commissions to members of the network supposedly headed by Koldo García, advisor to the former socialist minister José Luis Ábalos, to obtain the contracts for the transport of the masks to Spain.
Hidalgo has pointed out that the companies in his business group did indeed make around twenty flights for different administrations, including the Ministry of Transport, in order to bring medical supplies during the pandemic, but he has stressed that at first the company did so at zero profit, that is, without any kind of profit. Only later, he said, did they begin to obtain a return, which he put at 3% or 4% and described as low. In any case, the businessman has insisted that the details of these matters were handled by the commercial director of his company.
Regarding the payments that his business group made to the company MTM 180 Capital, owned by one of the alleged ringleaders of the plot, businessman Víctor de Aldama, Hidalgo has disassociated them from the transport of the masks. The former CEO of Globalia has asserted that he had known Aldama since 2018 and that he had a contract with him for the provision of different advisory services for which he paid him 10,000 euros monthly. Which ones? Hidalgo has indicated that one was for the arrangements to resolve a dispute over a hotel in Cancún (Mexico) and another, for helping the group negotiate the debt that Air Europa had with Venezuela. Hidalgo, who has denied knowing the former minister Ábalos, has stressed that in no case were these amounts linked to the masks purchased by Transportes from Soluciones de Gestión, the company at the epicentre of the Koldo plot. The business relationship between the two was broken off, however, in mid-2020 at the request of Aldama, he said.
During the interrogation, the lawyers of some of the popular accusations who are also involved in the Begoña Gomez casewhich is being investigated in a court in Plaza de Castilla in Madrid, have tried to raise questions about Hidalgo’s relationship with the wife of President Pedro Sánchez and the financial rescue of Air Europa, for which this company received an injection of 475 million approved by the Government in 2020. However, Judge Moreno has prevented the witness from responding, considering that this matter is not part of the investigation of the Koldo casefocused on the mask contracts. However, one of the accusations has asked him about the meetings he had with Aldama on June 24 and July 16, 2020, in the midst of the Air Europa rescue, and in which Begoña Gómez supposedly also participated. Hidalgo has assured that he did not remember them.
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The statement of the former CEO of Globalia until 2021 had been requested by Liberum, an association that emerged during the pandemic linked to denialist movements and which is acting as the private prosecutor in this case. This association – which has unsuccessfully requested that Begoña Gómez testify in the case – also wanted Leticia Lauffer, CEO of Wuakalua Hub, a subsidiary of Globalia dedicated to the tourism sector, to be summoned. However, both the judge in the first instance and later the National Court considered that the investigation had not revealed any relationship between Lauffer and the contracts under suspicion and, therefore, her statement was not justified and was rejected.
Hidalgo is summoned to appear before the Senate committee investigating the Transport contracts with the plot of Koldo case at the request of the PP. He was also summoned to the open commission, for the same events, in the Balearic Parliament, although at the last moment the Popular Party and Vox, which were the groups that had requested his appearance, withdrew it, convinced that, as Koldo García had done, for example, he would not attend.
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