Koldo Case: Armengol responds with documents to the PP’s offensive of doubts and suspicions to demand his resignation | Spain

The current president of Congress, Francina Armengol, has launched a counteroffensive to defend the exceptional legality of the contract that her Government in the Balearic Islands signed in the worst of the pandemic with the plot of Koldo case. And he did it this Monday for two hours through the presentation, by his number two in that regional executive, Iago Negueruela, of all the details and documents of that transaction at the headquarters of the Cortes and before almost 30 journalists from different media. Armengol has not yet appeared to give any type of political explanation of the case and its consequences, where the harassment of the PP has increased to the maximum until demanding his resignation this Monday in writing in the registry of the Lower House. Negueruela provided and let the journalists copy the emails of the officials and technicians involved and provided the reports of this case from the Balearic Intervention, which found no indication of illegality.

The current spokesperson for the PSOE in the opposition in the Balearic Parliament, Iago Negueruela, traveled to Madrid this Monday to inform journalists about the contract that the then Government of the socialist Francina Armengol signed with the company of the Koldo case, Management Solutions, worth 3.7 million euros to acquire 1.4 million masks. The Balearic PSOE delegation gave access to a large block of documents, both emails from the officials and deputy directors of the health service of that community involved in the operation and those responsible for purchases and, subsequently, the resolutions of claims raised. by the Balearic Health Service itself.

Iago Negueruela also explained that no one from the Ministry of Development headed by former Minister José Luis Ábalos in 2020 “pressured them at any time” and that they never maintained any contact with Koldo García, the alleged commission agent. The now socialist spokesperson in the Balearic Parliament could not specify who from that ministry put them in contact with the company but he did point out one of its owners, Íñigo Rotaeche, as the one who led the negotiation to facilitate the masks directly with the responsible for the Balearic Health Service.

The Balearic Islands, an archipelago with many health supply problems in the worst of the pandemic, thus resorted to subcontracting for 3.7 million euros a part of the large item of almost 50 million for various masks that Fomento and its dependent organizations acquired in China , and then formalized that contract through the emergency system, without prior paperwork, through emails and with payment in the aftermath but immediate because they hardly had any toilet material of that type and because they suffered great competition, according to that version. The Balearic Government signed in this exceptional, but legal way, hundreds of millions of euros with this emergency model (90 million in the first two months of the pandemic) and then endorsed them by the Armengol Government Council. Negueruela stated that neither the then president nor the Minister of Health knew about or followed the subsequent procedures of that contract or those of her claim, which were launched a few days after the pallets of masks arrived, because they were “very minor.”

Those responsible for the previous socialist Balearic Government defend that a few days after the arrival of these masks – which they believed to be FFP2 and the company labeled FFP2/KN95 – they sent them to their laboratory for analysis and verified that they did not have the highest quality and filtration capacity for be used in hospitals. But they deny that they were unusable for civil use and assure, with several documents that support them, that with that condition they hired and paid for them urgently because they wanted to keep them in stock, as required by the Ministry and advised by the WHO, and to prepare for the “de-escalation” process of the virus. They defend that this was endorsed by technicians and deputy directors of Health. With this provision, the Balearic Government decided to send these items to a dismantling hospital for storage and also in case they chose, as they did, to complain to the company that it had not sent them the material they had requested. These sources argue that in the end they did not even use those less qualified masks for extra-hospital purposes because they received better ones and they reserved them to support the resource and recover some of the differential money between those two types of masks.

The leaders of the previous Balearic Government argue in their favor that neither the summary, nor the judicial investigation of the case, nor the Prosecutor’s Office, nor the Intervention have observed any illegality or imputed anything to anyone on that team, and now they have undertaken a political and administrative with the current Balearic Executive of the PP, chaired by Marga Prohens, about who is to blame for the fact that the legal period of six months since the claim file was initiated within four years so that it may be prescribed has been passed. That deadline could have ended at the beginning of January, but neither the current Balearic Executive nor its lawyers have communicated how the situation is.

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In this context, the PP has raised its political demands for the Koldo case, after the resignation last week of his seat within the PSOE and his move to the mixed group of former minister José Luis Ábalos. This Monday, his spokesperson in Congress, Miguel Tellado, surrounded by part of his leadership, went to the Chamber registry to present in writing a request for Armengol to resign, which he based on a series of “doubts and suspicions” about his involvement. if. However, the request does not have support to prosper. Tellado even went so far as to accuse Armengol of being a “necessary collaborator” in the corrupt plot, an expression that refers to a figure with criminal significance. And he concluded: “he paid for masks that were useless knowing that they were a scam. “He ended up paying for the Ferraris of those involved in the plot.” The deputy secretary of the PP, Esther Muñoz, later stated in another press conference that the Koldo case It is “probably the biggest case of corruption of a government in office since Felipe González.”

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