The former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos He pointed out before the Supreme Court the current Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, as the person who recommended Koldo García to work as his driver. It was after the 2016 PSOE primaries.
“I had to move around Spain a lot and I was looking for a driver who was available 24 hours a day all week, because the drivers we had at the party headquarters had work limitations and we needed him, in addition to being a worker, to have a militant commitment (…) So this person was proposed to me,” he said on December 12.
Ábalos, investigated by Judge Leopoldo Puente in the so-called Koldo case, stated that García “took him” and “brought him”; “and somehow he took care of me,” He added according to the recording of his testimony that Europa Press has accessed. Later he ended up being his advisor.
“When I become a minister a few months later, I have the availability to appoint five advisors and, in gratitude, in recognition of the time he had been with me giving me all his personal assistance, because among those five I tell him to continue being with me,” he explained.
The former minister told the judge that he met Koldo “on a couple of visits to Navarra” during the primaries. “There is a long internal campaign, with a lot of mobilization. I coordinated that campaign. With another partner,” he recalled. Specifically, he placed that first meeting at the beginning of 2017 in Aldea Nueva del Ebro. “The other time I saw him at another event, always in the presence of Santos Cerdán,” he specified.
Ábalos explained that the then leader of the Navarrese socialists and now ‘number three’ of the PSOE had a “prominent” role in organizing that campaign for the primary elections. Until that moment, he assured, he had not seen Koldo García because his political career had been limited to Valencia.
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