A former minister in the Spanish government has denied any involvement in kickbacks and other irregularities said to have been committed in the procurement of Covid equipment in the Canaries.
José Luis Ábalos, the ex-transport minister and key figure in the governing PSOE party whose name has been linked to a number of allegations of favours in the awarding of contracts for Covid supplies and other lucrative dealings, appeared before the Canarian Parliament’s Committee of Inquiry yesterday at the third time of asking.
MPs in the regional parliament were keen to question Ábalos about his connections with businessmen and intermediaries suspected of benefiting massively from the contracts, but the former minister denied any knowledge of irregularities, insisting that he was not directly involved in any aspect of the procurement processes, not even consultations with the Canarian government on the contracts.
“I did speak to them about controlling the pandemic, protecting the population and putting the economy back on its feet” admitted Ábalos, who reminded the MPs that Spain’s first Covid case and the first lockdown of a hotel occurred in the Canaries.
The politician has been under increased scrutiny following revelations that his closest adviser and right-hand man Koldo García owned a company that earned millions of euros through supplying the Canarian Ministry of Health with PPE equipment and other materials at the hight of the pandemic. The firm also secured an estimated 40 million euros in contracts from Spain’s Transport and Interior Ministries.
The long-running investigation by Spain’s Civil Guard into kickback allegations centres in part on the ex-minister and his adviser staying in the plush Santa Catalina Hotel in Las Palmas in November 2020, at the same time as a well-known businessman who was one of 17 people arrested four years later on charges of corruption relating to Covid contracts.
Two weeks after the hotel stay, the Canarian government -whose president at the time was Spain’s current minister for the regions, Angel Victor Torres – awarded a lucrative contract for PCR testing of Canarians travelling back to the islands for Christmas. The contract was awarded to a firm said to have links to Koldo García’s business associate, Víctor de Aldama.
Distancing himself from Aldama, who the Committee of Inquiry also wants to question, Ábalos said he had “no idea how, or through whom, Aldama acquired his contacts with the Canarian government” and he was “not prepared to speculate on the matter”.
The explanations offered by the former minister failed to convince many members of the Committee, with Fernando Enseñat (Popular Party) accusing him of having “selective amnesia”. “He would have us believe that his close adviser García was acting entirely on his own initiative without the minister realising” said the MP.
