A former president of the Canary Islands has hit back at what he says are malicious accusations concerning alleged irregularities in contracts awarded to supply Covid masks in the islands at the height of the pandemic.
Angel Víctor Torres, who is now Spain’s minister for the regions, appeared before a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry yesterday and insisted that his government “took the decisions that needed to be taken” to ensure that front-line healthcare workers and the population in general in Canaries had an appropriate supply of face masks and other protective equipment.
The Canarian Parliament is investigating the awarding of a tender for a million masks which were never delivered and were purchased from a company that had no experience in the health sector and had car sales as its registered business activity.
Regional MPs are also looking into the awarding of government contracts worth over 12 million euros for masks to a firm said to be closely associated with Koldo García, at the time senior advisor to Spain’s transport minister José Luis Ábalos. Both men are under investigation in relation to a massive corruption network being probed by a Spanish judge.
During yesterday’s appearance, Torres admitted contact with Koldo García but flatly denied that he played any role in the awarding of the contracts, which were the sole responsibility of the Canarian Health Service. He insisted that García had only asked him about resolving delays in payments by the Canarian government to the firm at the centre of the inquiry.
Asked if he was concerned at the repercussions of potentially damaging messages reportedly obtained by the Civil Guard’s specialist branch (UCO) which is leading the wide-scale corruption investigation, the former president said that, while there would likely be audio recordings of “conversations of all kinds” given that he had many official dealings at the time with García and Ábalos, he was absolutely confident that none of the messages point to any irregularities on his part.
In October 2024, it was widely reported in the Spanish media that UCO officers had provided the High Court judge tasked with investigating the alleged corruption network a series of Whatsapp messages between Torres and one of four prominent businessmen said to have set up companies for the sole purpose of obtaining lucrative government Covid contracts.
