{"id":44388,"date":"2026-06-22T11:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T11:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/44388\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T11:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T11:57:10","slug":"spains-supreme-court-sentences-former-socialist-minister-abalos-to-24-years-behind-bars-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/44388\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain\u2019s Supreme Court sentences former Socialist minister \u00c1balos to 24 years behind bars | Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spain\u2019s Supreme Court has delivered a decision in the first trial of the so-called Koldo case, focused on alleged corrupt practices in the public purchase of facemasks during the Covid-19 pandemic<\/a>. The court\u2019s Criminal Chamber has sentenced Jos\u00e9 Luis \u00c1balos, who was the minister overseeing the department in charge of the contracts, to 24 years and three months in prison. Two other key figures in the case, former ministerial adviser Koldo Garc\u00eda and businessman V\u00edctor de Aldama, were sentenced to 18 years and a half and four years and a half, respectively, for running \u201ca criminal organization\u201d whose aim was to obtain a profit \u201cby virtue of the office held by \u00c1balos.\u201d <\/p>\n

The decision was handed down unanimously after 14 hearings in which more than 70 people testified, including public officials, government employees, businesspeople, expert witnesses, members of law enforcement and associates of the defendants, who were found guilty of bribery of public officials, embezzlement and influence peddling. <\/p>\n

The court agreed with prosecutors on nearly the entire chain of crimes with which the defendants were charged, including the awarding of a contract for the supply of 13 million face masks to a company linked to Aldama; a monthly payment of \u20ac10,000 for \u00c1balos\u2019 \u201cfixed expenses\u201d; the hiring of two women with ties to \u00c1balos for jobs in public companies; one of these women additionally had her apartment payments covered by the criminal association, which also dabbled in real estate in Madrid and Marbella, among other activities.<\/p>\n

The ruling will be decisive for the other offshoots of the Koldo case, which has put the Socialist (PSOE) government of Pedro S\u00e1nchez on the ropes, ending not only the career of \u00c1balos \u2014 who also served as the PSOE\u2019s organization secretary, a top post \u2014 but also that of his successor, Santos Cerd\u00e1n<\/a>. The sprawling investigation has extended into the alleged rigging of public works contracts in exchange for commissions, and into allegations of cash payments to the PSOE. <\/p>\n

The minority government is also dealing with the fallout from another high-profile probe into former prime minister Jos\u00e9 Luis Rodr\u00edguez Zapatero<\/a>, also a Socialist, who is accused of using his influence to secure a government bailout for a small failing airline. And in a separate case, a judge this past weekend decided to bring corruption charges against S\u00e1nchez\u2019s wife, Bego\u00f1a G\u00f3mez, and ordered her to surrender her passport.<\/p>\n

For now, despite the pressure from the opposition, S\u00e1nchez insists he will not hold early elections. Spaniards are scheduled to vote in 2027.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain\u2019s Supreme Court has delivered a decision in the first trial of the so-called Koldo case, focused on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20176,8375,20175,205,824,17],"class_list":["post-44388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-jose-luis-abalos","tag-koldo-garcia","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-psoe","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}