The Supreme Court decides whether to send Ábalos and Koldo to jail

Former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos and his former advisor, Koldo García, appear this Thursday at the Supreme Court as part of the case investigating possible irregularities in the purchase of masks during the pandemic. The court proposed trying both Ábalos and Koldo In addition to businessman Víctor de Aldama, who is also testifying today, but at the National Court, the case began in early November, and this morning, starting at 10:00 AM, Judge Leopoldo Puente of the Second Chamber must decide whether to send them to pretrial detention. He will review the precautionary measures following the brief from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which is seeking up to 24 years in prison for Ábalos and 19 and a half years for Koldo. Meanwhile, the private prosecutors have already indicated they will request that both be imprisoned. Currently, the former PSOE organizational secretary and his advisor are prohibited from leaving the country and are required to appear in court every two weeks. Ábalos goes on the offensive

Hours before the Supreme Court hearing, Ábalos launched an attack against Pedro Sánchez. The reason was the alleged meeting that the Spanish Prime Minister and the leader of Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, supposedly held in 2018, when Sánchez was not yet in office, precisely to negotiate the motion of no confidence that would oust Mariano Rajoy. Ábalos, although he offers no empirical evidence, claimed that "presidential sources" "explained" to him that this meeting "took place," a claim that both Sánchez and Otegi have denied from the outset. Koldo, who was allegedly present along with Santos Cerdán, had confirmed that the meeting occurred. In any case, if Ábalos and Koldo are imprisoned this Thursday, even preventively, that is, without a final sentence, the pressure on Sánchez will predictably increase even further. Yesterday, Wednesday, during the question period in Congress, Feijóo asserted that Sánchez was only "physically present" in the Spanish chamber because "his mind" was in the Supreme Court, and predicted that the "judicial weakness" of the Spanish government would be exposed. Andrea Zamorano reports.