The judge withdraws the passports of the former president of Adif and the former director of Highways in the Cerdán case.

MadridThe implications of the investigation into the case, initially named Koldo, then later Ábalos and finally Cerdán, extend beyond its three protagonists. In addition to the main branch of the Supreme Court, the case has another, secondary branch, in the National Court, focusing on two former senior officials linked to the Ministry of Transport, headed by José Luis Ábalos, who allegedly assisted the ringleaders in obtaining payment from the companies. These are the former president of Adif, Isabel Pardo de Vera, and the former Director of Highways, Javier Herrero, who testified this Monday as suspects before National Court Judge Ismael Moreno. After the interrogations, which lasted approximately one hour each and were conducted consecutively, Moreno concluded that there are "sufficient grounds" to charge them with the crimes of organized crime, bribery, and influence peddling. In response to this, the judge has ordered their passports to be revoked and their departure from Spain prohibited, as requested by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.

However, the strategy of both Pardo de Vera and Herrero has been to deny everything. In response to both the Prosecutor's Office and their defenses—they did not respond to the popular accusations represented by the PP lawyer—both disassociated themselves from the alleged irregularities and asserted that their contacts with Minister Ábalos and his former advisor, Koldo García, were limited to administrative matters. In the orders issued after the interrogations, however, Moreno maintains that the two former senior officials "had participated in the alleged commission of irregularities in the awarding of public works contracts at the Ministry of Transport, repeatedly favoring, at the request of Koldo García, different construction companies in order to allegedly obtain fraud. The bids in the sights of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard were precisely granted by Adif and by the General Directorate of Roads.

Apart from this obvious connection with the awards under suspicion due to the position they held, the judge also relies on messages exchanged by Pardo de Vera and Herrero with Koldo in which they spoke about some of these bids and on the recordings of conversations between Ábalos and his former advisor in which they are exposed. In a statement sent to Efe after the interrogation, the former president of Adif assured that none of the messages sent to her by Koldo "had any effect" on the contracting procedures of the entity that manages the railway infrastructure and defended that they were carried out "with all technical and legal guarantees." Legal sources present at the statement reported that Pardo de Vera told the judge that she even complained to Ábalos about Koldo because he was very insistent and interfered in matters for which he lacked training, and did so in an "inappropriate" manner.

The incriminating messages

One of the messages that makes the UCO suspicious about Herrero is that at the time the economic bids for a suspicious bid were opened, the former director of Highways sent Koldo: "Bingo! To Logroño." The case was awarded to Acciona Construcción, one of the companies under investigation. In his statement before the judge and according to the same sources, Herrero claimed to have used this expression to celebrate the resolution of the bidding war shortly before the regional and municipal elections in La Rioja, thus giving the PSOE political vindication. However, he denied that his reaction was due to the possibility of benefiting the company linked to the plot.

The hiring of Jéssica

In the case of Pardo de Vera, beyond the bidding, he is being investigated for the hiring of Jéssica Rodríguez, Ábalos's ex-partner, who was paid by public companies without working, allegedly with the complicity of the former president of Adif. Before the judge, Pardo de Vera asserted that he would never have tolerated such disrespect for the public.