The Supreme Court has rejected a complaint with which the ultra-Catholic group HazteOir accused Francina Armengol of lying in one of the multiple investigative commissions of the Koldo case. A criminal action in which the association denounced that the president of Congress and former president of the Government had said in Congress that the masks that Balears bought from the plot during the pandemic were for “civilian” use when, she affirms, they were medical equipment for health professionals. The judges reject the complaint and explain that there is a “patent lack of criminal relevance” in Armengol’s words.
The president of Congress appeared on May 13 before the lower house investigation commission on the Delorme operation, today named the Koldo case. Part of the investigation that the National Court was carrying out in its entirety at the time revolved around the purchases of masks and medical supplies from Soluciones de Gestión, a company linked to the plot, during the first months of the pandemic. When Armengol was in charge of the islands’ executive.
Armengol “flatly” denied having spoken with Koldo García about this hiring, accusing the PP of extracting data from the case to “in isolation and without context make it believe that it was a political decision” in favor of the company linked to Víctor de Aldama . It was the first time that a president of Congress, the third authority of the State, appeared in a parliamentary investigation. Later, he also did so in the Senate and the Balearic Parliament.
It was during his question and answer session with Elías Bendodo that Armengol explained that at that time the masks were purchased “to have a civilian stock.” “We needed to de-escalate, we are a tourist community. For us it was vital to have a lot of emergency stock, safety stock to be able to have a calm de-escalation,” he commented. He repeated the same idea when, later, Vox deputy Jorge Campos repeated the question.
HazteOir, an ultra-Catholic association that prosecutes both the Koldo case and the case against Begoña Gómez, Pedro Sánchez’s wife, presented its criminal actions against Armengol just three days later. Armengol, according to the now rejected complaint, had committed a crime by stating that the masks were for civilian use when, in reality, they were for health sector personnel.
The Supreme Court, following the criteria of the Prosecutor’s Office, has rejected HazteOir’s complaint due to a “patent lack of criminal relevance” of the facts they denounce. For the judges it is enough to take a look to the journal of Congress sessions to see the information of the IB-Salut purchasing files: “It refers to both documents where the destination for intra-hospital use is indicated, as well as frequently, also others, such as the order, invoices or delivery notes, with SAP coding for extra-hospital use and the specification of civil or extra-hospital use,” explains the Supreme Court.
This is not the only criminal initiative that different far-right groups and collectives have launched, without success for the moment, against Francina Armengol. Last year, the Supreme Court itself rejected a complaint from Vox in which it accused Armengol of prevaricating by allowing co-official languages in the Lower House. Two months ago, Santiago Abascal’s party announced a new complaint against the former Balearic president for some messages that she allegedly exchanged with Koldo García during the pandemic.
The known as Koldo case has branched out in recent weeks after the Supreme Court assumed the part of the case that affects former minister José Luis Ábalos, accused by the Civil Guard of collecting commissions and accepting gifts in exchange for favoring Víctor Aldama and their companies. Part of the proceedings carried out in the National Court investigate whether these companies obtained million-dollar contracts from IB-Salut to supply masks. Also if a possible claim by the administration to that company was handled irregularly during the current PP Balearic Government.
The part of the case that affects the Balearic masks circulated between the Court and the European Prosecutor’s Office until the Supreme Court established that the bulk of the case should continue to be investigated in Madrid. Recently, the European Prosecutor’s Office has left the entire case in the hands of the National Court, understanding that the Supreme Court’s decision left no room for a second parallel investigation.
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