Armando G. Tejeda

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, November 22, 2024, p. 24

Madrid. The president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, stated yesterday that his is an Executive cleanfaced with new accusations of corruption that led the right-wing opposition to threaten a motion of no confidence to remove him from power.

He thus reacted to the statement, before a judge, of businessman Víctor de Aldama, one of the alleged ringleaders of a corruption plot for which a former minister and former confidant of Sánchez, José Luis Ábalos, is being investigated.

According to the Spanish press, Aldama confessed to bribing Ábalos and other senior socialist managers and stated that Sánchez himself asked to meet him, so he went to an event where he spoke and took a photograph with the president of the government.

The statements of an alleged criminal who is in preventive detention, who has come out to testify before a judge, deserve the credit they have: nonesaid Sánchez, who affirmed that Aldama has demonstrated that his defense strategy is lies.

Aldama said he had paid Ábalos hundreds of thousands of euros in order to be favored in a negotiation to obtain several contracts for the sale of masks during the hardest months of the pandemic. He also points out the current Secretary of Organization of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and deputy Santos Cerdan, to whom he would have paid 15 thousand euros of bite for please him for having gotten involved in a tender affecting a quota which corresponded to Cerdan.

Similarly, he accused the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, of having asked him for 50 thousand euros when he was the regional president of the Canary Islands to sign a sale of masks, but that the price seemed so excessive to him. commission who decided not to pay it.

According to his statements, the businessman maintained a close relationship with the Spanish government that allowed him to become a kind of advisor or intermediary who served both to negotiate the rescue of the Air Europa airline and to receive the vice president of Venezuela in Madrid, Delcy Rodríguez.

Aldama assured that Pedro Sánchez asked to meet him to thank you his efforts with the governments of Mexico and Venezuelaand it was on that occasion when they took a photo.

In the case of Mexico, he stated that the gratitude was for getting a important railway contract for Spanish companies, in reference to the Mayan Train project, for which he made use of his former friendship with the former governor of Oaxaca, Alejandro Murat.

The PSOE reported that it will initiate legal action immediately if Aldama’s complaints are confirmed.

Meanwhile, after his confessions Aldama was released by the judge in the case and in response to the request of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

With agency information