Spanish PM’s former right-hand man jailed for 24 years for corruption

José Luis Ábalos attends a hearing in his supreme court trial in Madrid in April. Photograph: JJ Guillen/EPA View image in fullscreen José Luis Ábalos attends a hearing in his supreme court trial in Madrid in April. Photograph: JJ Guillen/EPA Spanish PM’s former right-hand man jailed for 24 years for corruption José Luis Ábalos found to have taken bribes on Covid-era public contracts in damaging blow to Pedro Sánchez Spain’s supreme court has jailed the former transport minister José Luis Ábalos for 24 years for taking bribes on public contracts for sanitary equipment such as ‌face masks during the Covid pandemic. Ábalos’s aide, Koldo García, was jailed for 19 years in a trial that is one of several scandals to have enveloped the government of Pedro Sánchez over recent months. The case is seen as particularly damaging for Sánchez because Ábalos was his trusted right-hand man for many years. Ábalos and Koldo heard the sentencing via video-conference in the Madrid prison where they have both been held in preventive custody since November. Presided over by seven judges, the court heard evidence from public officials, civil servants, expert witnesses and police, and found Ábalos and García guilty of being part of a criminal organisation, bribery, misuse of public funds, money laundering and influence peddling. The court concluded that “the seriousness of the charges derives from the fact that they erode the fundamentals of a democratic state and distort the purpose of public power into an instrument at the service of individual interests”. The sentencing comes two days after a separate court ruled that Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, who faces corruption and influence-peddling charges, is a flight risk and must hand over her passport . Gómez is awaiting trial over accusations she used her influence as the prime minister’s wife to secure sponsors for a university master’s degree course she ran, and that she used state funds to pay her assistant for help with personal matters. The case was triggered by a complaint from the rightwing pressure group Manos Limpias, which translates as Clean Hands. View image in fullscreen Begoña Gómez and Pedro Sánchez attend an event in Beijing in April Photograph: Andrés Martínez Casares/Reuters Gómez lives in the Moncloa palace, which is the seat of government and probably one of the most secure buildings in Spain, but the judge Juan Carlos Peinado said members of her security detail might help her to escape. This in turn has led Spain’s judicial watchdog, the General Council for Judicial Power, to take disciplinary action against Peinado for the “serious offence” of impugning the integrity of public servants, in this case, Gómez’s personal protection agents. Spain’s national police also released a rare statement calling the judge’s reasoning unjustified and stressing the force’s political neutrality. The government has denounced Peinado for what it described as his obsession with Gómez who, even if found guilty, would a