Ábalos, to the judge: "I have nowhere to go anywhere in the world"

MadridThree months ago, the Supreme Court judge Leopoldo Puente sentenced José Luis Ábalos to prison for an "extreme" flight risk. "I have nowhere to go anywhere in the world," the socialist former minister argued during the hearing held in late November to assess the application of this precautionary measure. Puente and subsequently the appeals chamber of the high court dismissed Ábalos's arguments, the details of which became known this Tuesday. In a video accessed by ARA, the former Minister of Transport, indicted for corruption, states that he has had "very many opportunities" to flee Spain, but that he has not wanted to do so.

"I have not requested a single permit to leave Spain or to enjoy a vacation with my children, whom I have denied them to," Ábalos assures in a final plea of several minutes. The former minister, who resigned his seat as a deputy a month ago, once the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against imprisonment, argued his status as a parliamentarian to defend that he was "clearly identifiable" because he attended Congress every week. When he was not in the lower house, he said, he lived "practically under house arrest at home." "I don't leave because I have media presence day and night with an action that seems like a para-police surveillance," he assured.

According to Ábalos, the investigating judge of the cases of alleged commission payments in public tenders already had, at the time of sending him to provisional prison, "all the information" about his lifestyle. "They know how I live, what I earn, how I spend, absolutely everything about my life is known," he complained. "I have nowhere to go, I don't even have a second home in Spain. How can I have one abroad?" he insisted. One of the effects of his imprisonment, once the decision was final, was the suspension as a deputy, which meant he stopped receiving his salary.

He maintains his "innocence"In his statement to the judge, Ábalos added as proof of his "rootedness" that he had to financially support his entire family. Even "children who had already become independent" and who, unfortunately, due to this situation, he had to take care of again, as he said. While admitting that it is "not credible" given the amount of evidence disseminated in the media, Ábalos maintained his "innocence." "This eagerness to prove it makes me stay precisely in my country, from which I have never left except occasionally for work and to which I have always returned," he concluded.