A few hours after the Supreme Court's morning session, a report that the Tax Agency has delivered to the National High Court has come to light as part of the ongoing investigation there into the Koldo case. It concludes that Víctor de Aldama defrauded 2.4 million euros corresponding to the 2020 Personal Income Tax (IRPF) in the context of the "face mask business". The amount that can be demanded from him is 1.6 million euros. The report, to which ARA has had access, points to a possible crime against public finance. Likewise, it states that Soluciones de Gestión defrauded 200,000 euros of Corporate Tax for 2020. These were sales for an amount of 54 million euros to Adif, Puertos del Estado, the Ministry of the Interior, the Balearic Islands Health Service, the Canary Islands Health Service, Air Europa, Deluxe Fortune, Serveo, and Zurich Insurance. The document considers that Víctor de Aldama and the businessman Juan Carlos Cueto played a "relevant role" in the sale of the face masks: the former was "essential" in obtaining the contracts thanks to his "proximity and contacts" with the public sector, and the latter "facilitated" the financing, exercised "a large part of the business management", and used the company Soluciones de Gestión to obtain the contracts. Without them, the business "could not have been carried out". Aldama's intermediation work has been "corroborated" by the "huge amount of electronic correspondence".
The former PSOE manager builds a firewall with the "choricitas" from the Koldo case
The lawyer of Ábalos's former advisor tries to demonstrate that all the money he received came from the PSOE and that there may be errors in the party's documentation.
MadridOne of the questions that the eighth day of the Ábalos case trial has tried to resolve is where the cash bills that José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García had came from. During the investigation, the Civil Guard detected more than 95,000 euros from the former Minister of Transport and former number three of the PSOE without bank tracing. This reinforced the thesis of "the existence of undeclared cash income" and triggered the opening of a separate piece in the National Court on the financing of the PSOE. The investigating judge raised the hypothesis that the PSOE helped Ábalos or Koldo to "launder" money. This Wednesday, in the Supreme Court, two lines of action have become apparent during the testimony of Mariano Moreno, who was the party's manager between 2017 and 2021. First, he assured that Ferraz "never" handed over 100, 200, and 500 euro bills, which are the ones the Civil Guard suspects Koldo and his circle managed – using code names. Later, the lawyer for Ábalos's former advisor, wanting to show that all the money he received was "of legal origin," wanted to highlight possible errors in the documentation that the socialists sent to the courts.
All the money that the PSOE paid to compensate for expenses that had been anticipated came from the party's "operating account": "What I can tell you is that the only cash the Socialist Party has was funded by income from its operating account. [...] There is no other source of income," maintained Mariano Moreno, who detailed that the majority – 99.4% – was done through transfers and only a minority was in cash.
He recounted that he requested the amount from the bank and they sent him the money through a security company: "We never asked for 500 euro bills, nor 200 euro bills, nor 100 euro bills, never. Those bills that could have been given by the PSOE do not exist," he emphasized. The interest in these amounts is that the Civil Guard believes that Koldo García and his ex-wife, Patricia Úriz, used a "agreed language" to refer to cash money "of unknown origin." The 500 euro bills were xistorras, the 200 euro bills were soles and the 100 euro bills were lechugas.
These are the expenses that the party paid to its workers and organic officials for items such as food, travel, tolls, or gasoline, which they paid initially and were then to be reimbursed. "Absolutely all reimbursements came with their supporting documents and receipts," made clear Mariano Moreno, who stressed that Ferraz did a "review" of all the tickets and checked that "they corresponded to the activities that were said to have been paid for." At one point during the questioning, he said that Ábalos was one of the PSOE leaders with "the most activity" and explained that he himself "authorized" his own expenses and those charged to his team. He also admitted, with a whisper, that party salaries are low: "The paychecks weren't exactly like in other places."
"Koldo's money was of legal origin"
The most tense interrogation was that of Leticia de la Hoz, Koldo García's lawyer, who asked incisive questions about the PSOE's controls to try to discredit the "categorical" answers the witness had given, and who was constantly interrupted by the court president, Andrés Martínez Arrieta. "Can there be missing pages of Koldo García's expense settlements, that they have overlooked or that it was an oversight?", the lawyer asked.
She provided the Supreme Court with nine pages of settlements that were not included in the documentation sent by the PSOE and which she has now exhibited with difficulty because they were poorly scanned. And she wanted to prove that the money Koldo received "was of legal origin" and that he "could handle cash from various people." That is, to be the "recipient of this cash" and then distribute it. Mariano Moreno first affirmed it "with his head." And later, after a long back-and-forth with misunderstandings on both sides of the bench, he said that whoever signed the document was the one who received the money.
The subsequent witness, Celia Rodriguez, an employee of the PSOE's organization secretariat, elaborated on this point. She indicated that "normally" it was Koldo who went to get the cash that was intended for Ábalos, and that sometimes Patricia Úriz even went.