from aid to Maduro to Falcon flights to Santo Domingo

The origin of Sánchez’s relations with Venezuela lies in an episode in 2019. Concretely, in the firm, but initial, support for Juan Guaido as interim president of the South American country.

The general manager even called Guaidó personally on January 24 of the same year in Davos to support his role. A month later, Spain officially recognized him as “interim president” after an eight-day ultimatum to Maduro to call free elections. But support for Guaidó was diluted in a timeline that, mysteriously, coincided with the controversial visit of the “suitcases” of Delcy Rodriguez in Madrid.

The arrival of Maduro’s number 2 was authorized by Sánchez and provoked the former Minister of Transport, Jose Luis Abaloshis former advisor, Koldo Garcia and the commission agent Victor de Aldama They went to Barajas airport due to the international sanction that prevented the vice president of Venezuela from setting foot on Spanish soil.

However, there is another chapter or mysterious coincidence in the disappearance of support for Guaidó: the public rescue of Plus Ultra in 2021, which is now suspected by the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF), and which also opened a fissure that leads to Venezuela and, later, the Dominican Republic.

In April of the same year, the government approved a €53 million injection for the airline, despite warnings from the competition about the real viability of the company.

But UCO investigations revealed that The links between the socialist milieu and Chavismo went beyond diplomatic gestures.

According to investigators, Koldo García met with Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas on October 7, 2021 to discuss matters related to Venezuelan oil through PDVSA and inform her that the PSOE had severed relations with Aldama as an intermediary between Chavismo and PSOE leaders.

The intercepted messages indicate that Koldo traveled under the direct order of Ábalos and refer to payments managed by the environment of Nicolas Maduro to the leaders of the PSOE through the oil companies.

In fact, there is a recording dated April 9, 2019, made in Ábalos’ office at the Ministry of Transportation, which shows how Koldo proposed an oil trade with Venezuela that could generate “500,000 euros per month”.

The conversations concluded that Ábalos’ relationship with Chavismo extended beyond his resignation as minister in July 2021.

Connections with the Dominican Republic

If Venezuela represents the ideological flank, the Dominican Republic has become the epicenter of the economic shadow. There converge the network of commissions linked to the Ábalos-Koldo case and the intensive and poorly explained use of the Falcon.

On the one hand, police investigations place Santo Domingo as one of the main nodes of the business network linked to Koldo Field.

There, the commission agent Aldama and his partner Jorge Brizuela Guevaraknown as The Venezuelan (a successful businessman in the Caribbean and later identified as a spy for the Maduro regime) created Pronalab.

This clinic, according to the UCO, would have served to laundering money through bribes contracts during the pandemic and repatriate the cash sums to Spain for the land.

In intercepted conversations, interviewees spoke openly about wads of bills and “regular payments,” including “the K10,000” (referring to Koldo García).

Brizuela Guevara was also under international investigation for her ties to mafias, drug trafficking and intelligence services, and was designated as a liaison for Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Intelligence Service.

Despite this, he maintains fluid relations with the Spanish political environment. During Fitur 2020, he even shook hands with Ábalos, whom he called a “friend”.

After the mask coup during the pandemic, the conspiracy created at least 14 businesses in Dominican territory, while the UCO documented Koldo’s brother’s trips to Santo Domingo to collect cash payments.

Falcon, startups and the shadow of Moncloa

On the other hand, Falcons and official Spanish planes have made the Dominican Republic the seventh most visited country since 2021 and the second non-European, after the United States.

Although Moncloa has only officially recognized six trips since 2019 and justifies them as technical stopovers, other records show more than 40 stopovers and up to 63 landings at Dominican airports since 2021.

Added to this opacity are the business relationships linked to the wife of the president of the government.

Before joining Complutense University, Begoña Gomez He headed the IE Africa Center, attached to the Business Institute (IE University), and from where he maintained close relations with Globalia and its subsidiary Wakalua, an organization promoting tourism startups in collaboration with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

In 2018, Begoña Gómez joined the IE Africa Center. A month later, Zurab Pololikashvilisecretary general of the OMT – who would launch, remember, Wakalua with Globalia – meets Sánchez in Moncloa. It was one of many meetings they would have later.

Gómez coincided with the XXIII General Assembly of the UNWTO, held in Saint Petersburg (Russia) in 2019, with Javier Hidalgothen CEO of Globalia, whose airline Air Europa will then be saved by the State with a public injection of 475 million.

At the same time, the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabésalso a partner of Begoña Gómez and for whom she signed letters of recommendation with a view to obtaining public contracts, designed a proposal for the Ministry of Tourism of the Dominican Republic aimed at creating “the most relevant tourist hub in the Caribbean” with Wakalua, a project conceived just months after Sánchez’s arrival in La Moncloa.

Other episodes with Venezuelan connections

Another chapter, also questioned by the opposition, is the silence of the executive after the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the opposition leader. Maria Corina Machado.

While other countries celebrated this award as unequivocal support for the fight against Chavismo, Moncloa chose not to speak.

Sánchez’s silence contrasts with the traditional Spanish position towards Venezuela and with his own actions in previous years, when he sheltered the Venezuelan opponent for more than a year, Leopoldo Lopez.

However, there is another more recent example that reflects the silence of the President of the Government: during the mass release of detainees in Venezuela, which occurred barely a week ago, and where neither of the two Basque citizens appeared, Jose Maria Basoa And Andres Martinezwho since September 2024 have been in preventive detention in Venezuela after being accused of espionage and planning attacks against the regime of Nicolas Maduro.

More than a year later, they remain imprisoned, largely incommunicado, while their families denounce that it is a political detention coinciding with the diplomatic crisis between Madrid and Caracas.