He arrived with a cross in his buttonhole, but the via crucis was not for the businessman, but for the PSOE. Although he is not the subject of the procedure – which is being investigated in a separate piece in the National Court -, Víctor de Aldama, commissioner of the “Koldo plot”, put special effort during his seven hours of testimony as a defendant in influencing the alleged illegal financing of the PSOE, for which he claimed he contributed 1.8 million between 2019 and 2020 in donations.
“If you look at the party’s accounts, there is a peak in important donations in those months,” he noted. “You will be able to see where the money comes from.”
Aldama estimated the amount of money he paid in total to the then Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos and his alter ego Koldo García at between three and a half and four million.
And he pointed directly to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who he claims, because Koldo confirmed it, was aware of everything, to the point that places him at the top of the plot.
“If there is a hierarchy” (in the criminal organization), he stirred, “President Mr. Sánchez is on rank one, Mr. Ábalos on 2, Koldo on 3 and I on 4.”
In this regard, he emphasized that it was the minister’s then advisor who told him about Pedro Sánchez: “The president is clear about everything we do and knows it. “I was aware of everything.”
The commission agent states that he heard Koldo speaking on the phone with Sánchez several times, and was surprised that he called him “Pedro” and spoke to him in a colloquial tone, “with confidence.” “I’m going to rip your head off,” he says he once told him. He even asked him, he explained, the reason for that trust: “He owes me a lot and he knows why.”
“The ministers picked up his phone because they knew he was a person from Pedro Sánchez,” added Aldama, who recalled that Koldo himself told him that he had to be in Moncloa, but since his profile did not fit there, they placed him in the Ábalos ministry through Santos Cerdán.
According to what he said, it was Koldo who asked him to get “donations” from builders for “party financing.” “How is this billed?” the businessman asked, surprised. “Víctor, that can’t be billed,” he hears him say.
At first, he believed that he was a mere “vehicle” to “channel” the donations, but when he realized that they were cash contributions he understood “that it is not a typical donation and that we are doing something illegal, in which I do not feel comfortable, but not uncomfortable either,” he admitted. “In the end I am a businessman and I have to work, because I was putting everything on the table” to strengthen his contacts.
In any case, Koldo tried to reassure him: “Don’t worry, I make the assignments to whoever has to do it and there will be enough people to make different donations.”
Despite his accusations of illegal financing against the PSOE, Aldama once again denied that he sent Carmen Pano to the PSOE headquarters in Ferraz with 90,000 euros in bags, as the businesswoman claims. “At no time have I ordered him,” he reiterated before stating that “to go to the Ferraz headquarters there is a security arch and numerous controls.”
Indirectly, he alluded to Ferraz’s cash payments to Ábalos’ advisor – disbursements that the former minister and Koldo attribute to payments that corresponded to the party they were advancing.
Ferraz has insisted – through his former manager and the employee who gave him those envelopes and, also, through the documentation provided – that this money was only disbursed if it was justified with receipts.
“Koldo was obsessed with tickets,” he recalled. “I have seen him pick up tickets from the ground to later present them to the Socialist Party and have them pay him.”
The commission agent, who showed his regret, pointed out that his case was not isolated, because in the field of public works contracting “there were more scammers,” referring to “people who did the same thing as me and who I suppose distributed” the money as he did.
And when asked by his lawyer, José Antonio Choclán, he stated that he has no news of any of the announced complaints against him by Pedro Sánchez and several of his ministers once the conciliation acts were held. “Absolutely no complaints.” “We are still waiting for those demands,” he assured.
The accused – for whom the Prosecutor’s Office demands a sentence of seven years in prison, much lower than those faced by Ábalos and Koldo thanks to their “confession” – recalled his first meeting with Pedro Sánchez at a rally in Madrid in February 2019, which Koldo organized.
“He tells me that he is going to take me to see the president.” «I tell him that I am neither a member of the PSOE nor a militant and that I am going there to swallow three hours of a rally by a man I do not know… (in reference to the then socialist candidate for Mayor of the capital Pepu Hernández). But Koldo insists that it is “an opportunity” because “everyone will be there” and also “the boss” (Ábalos).
After the event, Koldo takes him to a reserved area, where the leader of the PSOE told him, according to his version: “Thank you very much for everything, I know perfectly well what you are doing and I wanted to thank you” (for his efforts in Mexico with Transport to open business opportunities for Spanish businessmen).