The National Court has demanded that the PSOE provide to the case opened for the alleged irregular financing of the party the donations it received between the years 2017 and 2024, according to sources from the investigation to EL MUNDO.
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Likewise, the instructor of this procedure, the magistrate Ismael Moreno, has requested the Court of Auditors to send him the donations received by the party of Pedro Sánchez, which were audited by this body. The objective pursued by this diligence is to be able to cross-check data on the so-called ‘smurfing’ that Judge Moreno is secretly investigating as an alleged opaque financing route of the Government party.
In an interview yesterday on TVE, President Sánchez denied that his party had been financed irregularly and revealed that the Justice had requested that they provide the «donations» received by Ferraz. «We have given all that information,» asserted the head of the Executive.
For its part, sources from the investigation consulted by this newspaper confirm that this request was made to the PSOE by the National Court before the summer holidays and that the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard is already analyzing all the data delivered by the party. Also from the Court of Auditors.
The suspicion that Judge Moreno has, together with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, is that through donations to the PSOE the payments that various builders made to the party to access rigged large public works were camouflaged. In turn, the money received in the party’s donation account ended up being transferred to the operating account -from which travel expenses, per diems, etc. were paid- to reintroduce it into the legal circuit.
The testimony of Aldama
According to the version given by businessman Víctor de Aldama, first in the trial at the Supreme Court and then in this secret piece, those black funds came from builders who financed the PSOE in exchange for the riggings they obtained in the Ministry of Transport. The amount paid was agreed on a case-by-case basis.
The construction companies handed the money to Aldama, who passed it on to the former advisor of José Luis Ábalos, Koldo García, and the former minister. These under-the-table payments camouflaged under the concept of donations the income of those funds to the PSOE accounts. «During 2019 to 2020 I delivered almost 1.8 million euros in donations (…). Koldo told me: ‘Don’t worry, I make the assignments to whoever has to make them. There will be quite a few people to make different donations’», the businessman indicated in the High Court.
According to sources close to the ongoing investigations, Aldama developed this modus operandi in the two statements given during the last months before Judge Moreno, thus detailing the mechanics of the alleged irregular financing through smurfing. The businessman detailed that a group of companies, among which he highlighted the construction companies Levantina, Lantania and Azvi, conspired with the Ministry of Transport to receive rigged public contracts in exchange for the payment of commissions that, always according to his account, the former advisor of José Luis Ábalos, Koldo García, transformed into irregular donations for the PSOE.
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Furthermore, as a witness he stated in his appearances in the past months of March and July that these companies were awarded rigged tenders in which they were rated with the highest score above offers from international construction companies and after having been eliminated from other tenders due to the lack of quality of their projects.
During the pandemic
The agreement that these companies reached with the Transport officials involved, Aldama elaborated, the payment of commissions ranging between 3% and 5% of the contracted amount and added that the volume of payments that were transformed into irregular donations reached, according to his calculations, 1.8 million euros.
This operation was carried out by Koldo García with the knowledge of then minister José Luis Ábalos, Aldama indicated in his testimonies. And he added that it materialized throughout the pandemic under the argument that the party urgently needed funds.
The businessman already delivered to the Supreme Court lists of awards with Koldo García’s handwriting in which the aforementioned companies appeared to be awarded works that had been «pre-awarded». The High Court checked the notes and certified that they had been made by who was Ábalos’s right hand in the ministry. These facts are being investigated in another case of the National Court in which the former PSOE Organization Secretary Santos Cerdán is also charged.
As revealed last Monday by this newspaper, the case of the party’s financing continues to advance also regarding money coming from Venezuelan oil. The Court is investigating a fictitious contract of 15 million euros in which the company Apamate Corporate and Trust, S.L., controlled by Venezuelan businessman Francisco Flores -linked to the Plus Ultra case where former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is charged- and a company of Aldama appear.
Specifically, a first operation of five million euros is being investigated, through a transfer made via Russia, to obtain funds for the PSOE and the Socialist International.
