The businesswoman Carmen Pano ensures before the judge that she delivered 90,000 euros at the PSOE headquarters for Aldama’s indication

The businesswoman Carmen Pano, charged with the millionaire fraud in the hydrocarbons, said on Tuesday before the judge investigating the ‘Koldo Case’ in the Supreme Court, which delivered 90,000 euros in cash to the PSOE following instructions of the alleged managing of the plot, Víctor de Aldama, they inform Eldiario.es legal sources. The businesswoman, who has appeared as a witness, has confirmed in judicial headquarters the claims she has launched in recent months in the media.

According to Pano, Aldama would have made an intermediary with an entrepreneur from the hydrocarbons sector to get a license for his company. That businessman, named Claudio Rivas, would have paid in return to Aldama 600,000 euros. And, from that amount, Aldama would have diverted the aforementioned amount to the PSOE, always according to his testimony. Pano has cited two deliveries at the Socialist Headquarters and has maintained that on one of the occasions it was by taxi and that in the other he was aboard a vehicle that was driving a friend of Rivas.

Rivas, who spent two months in prison for the fraud of hydrocarbons, was also summoned on Tuesday as a witness to the judge who investigates former Minister José Luis Ábalos for allegedly favoring certain companies in exchange for bites. Before the judge, the businessman has denied having paid commissions to Aldama.

Last October, the Digital The Objective published that “an anonymous businessman” would have made that payment in exchange for Rivas to get the license to operate in the hydrocarbons sector for one of his companies: Villafuel. Days later it came to light that this “businessman” was, in reality, Carmen Pano.

The Popular Party was based on that information to file a complaint for irregular financing against the PSOE. The letter did not provide more evidence than anonymous testimonies who claimed to have delivered bags with money at the headquarters of the Socialists in Ferraz. Nor did he identify those who make those accusations and did not add any evidence, testimony or document.

The National Court rejected that complaint when he understood that in the case of fraud in the payment of hydrocarbons taxes in the framework of which Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party asked to investigate the PSOE “there is no link with the denounced.” Judge Santiago Pedraz’s car, instructor of the cause of fraud in hydrocarbons, also warned of the “contradictions of anonymous complainants” on which the complaint was based.

The Chalet of Cádiz

Until now, the investigation of the ‘Koldo Case’ has linked Pano and Rivas with one of the prebendas that the former minister allegedly received from Aldama in exchange for millionaires contracts: the use and enjoy in the line of conception (Cádiz).

According to the UCO, Aldama tried to materialize the purchase of that property through Venezuelan citizens, but the operation did not go ahead. Finally, the property was acquired by the company has Got Time, a wholesale hydrocarbon marketer administered by Carmen Pano and her daughter Leonor, who was a couple of the commission. However, the UCO considers that the company was “real controlled” by Claudio Rivas. In return, he intended to receive a license for the sale of fuel. The latter has denied before the judge to be behind this company.

On July 10, 2021, a month after the signing of the sale of the house, Ábalos was dismissed. Half year later, in December, the Ministry of Industry denied the license to Villafuel. That decision angered Rivas, who warned his partner that the new scenario was going to “bring problems” and “very serious”, according to the messages seized.

Then, Ábalos had already received a bureaux in which he was claimed to pay several monthly payments of the villa. That writing also solivized Koldo, who complained to Aldama and he made him see that the objective of that burofax was to “give appearance of legality” and “cover”, but that he should not give importance. “Remember that I told you that it would come to be covered but it is only because of that nothing calmer and we talked in person,” the commissioner wrote.

Before the judge, Aldama gave a different version. He said that the company of which his ex -partner was administrator was “working very well” and that he was interested in making investments, so he proposed that he acquire the house and be rented to the then minister with a purchase option. According to Aldama’s version, Leonor González Pano seemed timely to the proposal and told him that “what better than tenant than to have a minister.”