Koldo García denies the collection of commissions or bribes and exonerates Ábalos

During two and a half hours of testimony before the instructor Leopoldo Puente, García has tried to deny all the statements of the businessman and commission agent Víctor de Aldama, ensuring that there was never any distribution of money with him and the former minister and even less in Ábalos’ office in Transportation.

He has acknowledged, however, that the businessman was once in his official home on Balbina Valverde Street in Madrid, although he did not know how to specify what they talked about because according to his statement, he stayed at the door of the apartment. Also, Aldama’s visits to the ministry were very frequent in his capacity as advisor to Air Europa, although he has gone so far as to assure that there they talked about “banal things.”

In response to questions from all parties (judge, Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the accusations brought together by the Popular Party) he was insistent that he did not recognize his handwriting in some manuscripts provided by Aldama as an indication of the distribution of commissions for public works. He has denied that he or Ábalos received those alleged bribes, and he has also denied that a part of them ended up in the PSOE, according to the sources present at the interrogation consulted by ABC.

And denying, he has also denied that Aldama managed rental apartments where the now Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, met with Ábalos and “young ladies.” Likewise, he has insisted that he did not deliver envelopes with money to either the PSOE Secretary of Organization, Santos Cerdán, or Carlos Moreno, the Chief of Staff of the Minister of Finance María Jesús Moreno, although he knew both of them. He thus refutes one of Víctor de Aldama’s main accusations.

Regarding the apartment in the Plaza de España in Madrid supposedly paid for by Aldama for Ábalos’ extramarital partner, Jessica RG, according to his version, the former advisor has refuted it, stating that it was Luis Alberto Escolano (Aldama’s partner) and Joseba García (brother of Koldo García) who paid for it. She has stated that it was a company apartment in which they let her “spend the night” on different occasions. What the UCO maintains is that he lived there for more than two years on behalf of the commission agent.

According to the sources consulted by ABC, Koldo García seemed more determined to deny not only Aldama’s accusations but three years of investigation by the Civil Guard in the National Court than to defend Ábalos, since anything that could incriminate him, not I remembered it. In this effort, he has incurred several contradictions, such as stating that there were more than a dozen offers for masks that are not recorded and that he was unaware that Aldama had a relationship with Soluciones de Gestión, which was the winning bidder.

There have also been issues on which he has not wanted to comment, such as the frustrated trip of the Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez to Spain in January 2020 – he has refused to respond to the PP’s accusation on this – or the rescue of Air Europa . On this matter, Koldo García appears taking credit for this public aid in a WhatsApp chain that the Civil Guard intervened. Before the judge he assured that he had nothing to do with that.

Regarding his assets, he has alleged that if he had cash (24,000 euros were found on him and the UCO speaks of an increase in assets of more than a million and a half) it is because his family has a “custom” of keeping money at home and it has been clinging to a counter-report that his defense presented at the National Court about his family’s financial situation.