The PSOE has agreed to summon José Luis Ábalos to the Congressional investigation commission on the purchase of medical supplies during the pandemic. The socialist group had ignored the former minister and former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE in its proposal for appearances, but the parliamentary allies did want to call the person responsible for the department where the plot of illegal commissions in the purchase of masks and other items to testify. essential products during the health crisis. The socialists have assumed their impossibility of leaving out the current deputy of the Mixed Group.
The investigation commission met this Tuesday behind closed doors to debate and approve the initial work plan. The basis for doing so has been the PSOE proposal. The party led by Pedro Sánchez announced that it would request parliamentary investigations in response to the police operation that revealed the so-called 'Koldo case', an alleged plot of businessmen and senior socialist officials who had promoted contracts for the sale of medical supplies and charged illegal commissions to change.
One of those named is Koldo García, Ábalos's right-hand man in both the PSOE and the Ministry of Transport. The advisor is charged, but the former socialist number two is not. Even so, Sánchez demanded his deputy status. Ábalos refused to resign and went to the Mixed Group, from which he voted in favor of the investigation commission.
Those who will not have to testify before Congress in this first round of appearances are some of the most prominent names from the main parties. PSOE and PP have been looking askance at each other for weeks over cases of corruption related to the purchase of medical supplies and measuring each step to be taken based on what the rival is doing. A kind of parliamentary cold war that is played out in parallel in the Congress and the Senate.
Thus, Congress has left Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who was president of Galicia during the pandemic, out of the first round of appearances. And neither is the president's wife, Begoña Gómez, whom the PP has put in the spotlight despite the warnings of the lawyers since they do not dare to summon her.
At the moment, other top-level regional leaders who did appear in the documents presented by other parliamentary groups are also excluded from the appearances.
Nor will Alberto González Amador, Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner and accused by the courts of trying to defraud the Treasury of hundreds of thousands of euros of the million-dollar commissions he earned as an intermediary in the purchase of masks during the pandemic, be called to testify for now.
The groups, however, agree to summon several regional presidents. The majority of the PP but also of the PSOE: the Madrid president; the president of the Balearic Islands, Marga Prohens; the Murcian Fernando López Miras; that of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla or the Galician Alfonso Rueda. Also the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Ayuso's chief of staff.
The former Minister of Health during the pandemic, Salvador Illa, or the president of Congress and former president of the Balearic Islands, Francina Armengol, will go on behalf of the PSOE. The groups have also agreed to call part of the Health Cabinet, such as the former advisor and main visible face during the pandemic, Fernando Simón, as well as Illa's former chief of staff, Víctor Francos.
