The judge authorized installing spy software on the phones of five people involved in the ‘Koldo case’ | Spain

The judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno, instructor of the Koldo case in which the alleged collection of illegal commissions in the purchase of masks in the worst of the pandemic is investigated, authorized the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard in November to infiltrate a computer program spy on the phones of five of the main people investigated in the corruption plot. Specifically, in three of the cell phones used by Koldo García, former advisor to the former socialist Minister of Transportation José Luis Ábalos; in which his wife, Patricia Uriz, used; in two from businessman Víctor de Aldama, president of Zamora CF; in another by businessman Juan Carlos Cueto; and in another by José Luis Rodríguez García, a civil guard in the reserve who had worked in the security team at the Transportation headquarters.

Despite the initiative, several subsequent reports from the armed institute indicate that there were “technical difficulties” in installing the software and it is not known if they finally succeeded. However, police officials had already had access to part of the conversations of those investigated through the intervention of their voice calls and the use of ambient microphones to record when they spoke in public places. In addition, the Civil Guard had installed beacons on their vehicles to know their movements and even set up a seemingly routine roadblock to be able to access the documentation carried by one of those involved, Joseba García (Koldo’s brother), without raise suspicions.

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The Civil Guard asked the judge about the need to install the spy program after the agents intercepted a conversation on the street between Koldo García and his brother Joseba on October 17, 2023, in which the former claimed to know that they were being investigated by the police. despite the fact that the investigations were still secret. “Now the Civil Guard is coming to see me and they are also coming from the UCO to explain to me that they did not follow me, because if it was in the follow-up of Izaskun and it was the father… Behind screwing José Luis [Ábalos]behind the Secretary of State, behind the… There are… It seems to me that there are 27 people who are following,” he stated while reprimanding his relative.

“From these statements by Koldo it is inferred that he would be aware through sources of the Civil Guard itself that there is an investigation into his person,” the armed institute admits in the report sent to the magistrate on November 6, in which it asked to adopt the measure due to the fear of losing the important source of information that, until that moment, had been the ordinary telephone interventions that the judge had used. They weren’t wrong. In subsequent reports, the agents highlight that several members of the plot thereafter exercised extreme caution in their communications and avoided speaking on the phone, instead scheduling face-to-face meetings.

A day later, the judge authorized the installation “remotely and telematically” of the spy program, which should allow researchers “to examine it remotely and without the knowledge of its owner or user,” and “the extraction of the information contained or stored on the devices used by those investigated.” On the one hand, the program allows you to record and monitor, as they are occurring, communications of all types – voice or written – through instant messaging applications such as “WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, Twitter, Skype or any other similar”. In addition, it empowers agents to access and extract “information found in the same [aparatos] and in remote or cloud storage repositories”, as well as “any mass storage device inserted in the terminals”. The program also allows you to extract the contents of the device’s memory or the cards installed in it.

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Need for measurement

In that resolution, the magistrate defended the need for the measure, since at that time the existence of “clear objective evidence of the participation of the people under investigation in the commission of the aforementioned crimes” had been confirmed. The National Court keeps the case open for membership in a criminal organization, money laundering, bribery and influence peddling. However, instructor Ismael Moreno also stressed that the judicial authorization had an initial duration of one month, although it could be renewed. Once finished, the software It had to be uninstalled “removing itself from the terminal without leaving any type of trace.”

The Ministry of the Interior uses this type of program to “be able to mitigate the effect of encryption on legally intercepted Internet communications,” in view of the new technologies used by criminals and terrorists to encrypt them and evade police surveillance, according to the department. by Fernando Grande-Marlaska in his Strategic Plan for the 2018-2020 triennium. With the update, the Interior also intended to adapt the Legal Telecommunications Interception System (known by its acronym SITEL) to the requirements imposed by the 2015 reform of the Criminal Procedure Law for investigations using computer programs. This legal modification then established the procedural guarantees for the intervention and registration of communications of any kind made by telephone or other means of telematic communication, and imposed a sealing or electronic signature system that guaranteed the authenticity and integrity of the information collected when was placed at the disposal of a judge.

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