The Guardia Civil's Central Operational Unit (UCO) is finalising a second line of investigation into the so-called 'caso Mascarillas' (masks case), which relates to public contracts for the purchase of face masks during the pandemic and that led to the arrest in February 2024 of Koldo García, a former personal adviser to José Luis Abalós, the ex-Spanish transport minister. Following this arrest, Abalós, who had ceased to be minister in July 2021, was expelled from Pedro Sánchez's PSOE party. In February this year, the Supreme Court, investigating Abalós and his links to García, withdrew his passport and ordered him to report to a court every fortnight.
The person who signed the the Abalós expulsion document was Santos Cerdán, PSOE's secretary of organisation, who was forced to resign earlier this week over his involvement in the case against Koldo García.
The UCO has produced a 490-page report that deals with contracts beyond those for the purchase of masks; they are for public works. This second line of investigation followed on from the original 'caso Mascarillas' investigation and exposed Santos Cerdán's direct involvement in the alleged corruption scheme; and Mallorca is firmly at the centre of this investigation.
In January 2023, the UCO revealed that Ábalos, García and Rubén de Aldama, the brother of Víctor de Aldama, who is implicated as one of those behind the scheme, had made various trips together between October 2018 and March 2019 and so before the pandemic. The Guardia Civil believe it is significant that, even before the circumstances arose for the purchase of masks, these three individuals were staying in the same luxury hotels in places such as Palma and Almeria. They also went on a trip to London.
The UCO is said to still be finalising details of investigations carried out in Mallorca over recent months. Companies at the centre of the report that brought down Santos Cerdán have had multi-million-euro contracts in the Balearic Islands, primarily in Mallorca. Most notable is Acciona, one of the largest public works companies in the Balearics. It has been awarded more than 70 projects since 2017. But it must be pointed out that Acciona is a major company and so this level of activity would be justified by its size.
Another company is Levantina de Ingeniería y Construcción, which was awarded the contract for the redevelopment of the old Son Dureta Hospital in Palma for nearly nine million euros. A Valencian company, it is led by José Ruz. Contracts it had form part of the Supreme Court investigation; these are said to have had a direct connection to Koldo García. This company filed for bankruptcy and abandoned the Son Dureta project, justifying repeated failure to meet deadlines on material that had been stolen.
Politically, this whole affair has drawn in Francina Armengol, the former president of the Balearics and currently the president (speaker) of Congress. On Friday, the Partido Popular stated that the 'caso Mascarillas' had placed the Balearics at "the epicentre of a criminal plot" and demanded explanations from Armengol, especially as Víctor de Aldama had said in a television interview that he had met Armengol at the Balearic Government's headquarters.
A year ago, Armengol told a Senate investigative committee that she did not know Aldama. She later admitted to people close to her that she had met Aldama at a meeting at the Consolat de Mar HQ. Aldama was a member of a delegation from Globalia, the Llucmajor-based company that owns Air Europa. The company's future was being discussed. PSOE sources have stressed that no exclusive meeting was ever scheduled with Aldama, that Armengol had not met him before and that no contracts were discussed.
The PSOE explanation does not satisfy the PP. On Friday, vice-president and government spokesperson Antoni Costa recalled that WhatsApp messages revealed "a very personal relationship" between Armengol and Koldo García. "This has only just begun, it's only the beginning," Costa told a press conference. "We don't know if new companies may appear in new reports, nor do we know how far the ramifications of the corrupt scheme may go. But what we are learning leads us to think there may be more."
He added that all contracts raised during the pandemic state of alarm are being audited, not just those related to face masks, which had been purchased from the company linked to Aldama, Soluciones de Gestión y Apoyo a Empresas S.L. "Armengol apparently opened the doors of the Balearic Government to a corrupt scheme in 2020 when everyone was locked in their homes."