Madrid, December 12 (EFE). – Former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos would have offered a position in his advisory cabinet to the daughter of Carmen Pano, the businesswoman who claimed to have delivered 90,000 euros to the PSOE headquarters in Ferraz, while negotiations were underway to obtain the hydrocarbon operator license for the company Villafuel, owned by Claudio Rivas, partner of Víctor Aldama.
In a conversation on June 27, 2020, Leonor González Pano told her boyfriend that Ábalos had made her this job offer with “an approximate remuneration of 5,000 euros per month”, according to the report of the UCO of the Guardia Civil to the judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz, which was brought against Villafuel for an alleged fraud of 182.5 million euros in VAT between 2022 and 2024 determined.
An offer that Carmen Pano’s daughter rejected: “Ábalos offered me to work in his consulting office, of course I refused (….) I explained it to Víctor (de Aldama), not because in the end we would have a problem and he would get in trouble.”
“I don’t care about the money, I can’t handle it. And this guy is one of those typical guys who thinks he’s doing you a favor and then charges you more than enough.
The 182-page report details the ups and downs experienced by those interested in obtaining approval for Villafuel’s wholesale operation, taking advantage of “the criminal organization’s penetration at the senior levels” of the ministries of transport, industry and environmental transition.
An infiltration made possible by Víctor de Aldama due to his direct access to Ábalos, of which Carmen Pano and her daughter knew, who were the ones who put Claudio Rivas in contact with the commission agent in the Koldo case.
First, through the then Minister of Transport, they tried to obtain the license through the Ministry of Industry, for which they met with the Chief of Staff of Minister Reyes Maroto, Juan Ignacio Bidart, who, according to the UCO, could have been appointed by Ábalos “to maintain the institutional dialogue with the members of the criminal organization”.
However, in a first “ministerial meeting”, Bidart explained that Industry was not the responsible ministry to grant this license, a fact that Víctor de Aldama later communicated “in a joking tone” to Leonor González Pano: “hahahahaha. Look, tell me Industry and then be Energy. Thank God the Godfather rules otherwise, hahahahahaha.” The UCO believes that Aldama refers to Ábalos by the nickname “the Godfather”.
Given this confusion, the conspiracy aimed to contact Marc Pons, chief of staff to Vice President and Minister of Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera.
Everything seemed to be developing positively for their interests until Ábalos was dismissed from his position on July 10, 2021, two days after the meeting of Ábalos’ former advisor Koldo García and Pons at the Nuevos Ministerios complex, and shortly thereafter submitted his resignation as organizing secretary of the PSOE.
After Aldama learned of the firing, he spoke to Carmen Pano’s daughter to reassure her. A conversation that she later forwarded to her boyfriend via WhatsApp.
“He interfered in the Council of Ministers. Victor just called us. The whoremonger confronted the handsome guy. And he stood up in the middle of the meeting and told him in front of everyone to fuck him,” Leonor González Pano told her partner.
“Apparently,” he continued, “half of the party is on the side of the whore and the other half is on the side of the pretty one – which seems to be a reference to President Pedro Sánchez. He has called on us to calm down so that we don’t have to worry about what is going on. That everything moves forward.”
“Of course the whore would end the PSOE,” replied the friend of Carmen Pano’s daughter.
She also told her partner that the dismissal of Ábalos had worried the owner of Villafuel: “Claudio is crazy,” she told him, which he thought was something normal: “Everything could go to shit. You know that, don’t you?” he replied.
“I don’t believe that. They were given a lot of money, they won’t risk it. They were given more than a kilo,” he added, referring to the alleged consideration that would have been paid to Ábalos. EFE
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