Spain’s Supreme Court has sentenced former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos, once a senior figure in Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party (PSOE), to 24 years in prison for his role in a corruption scheme linked to the award of face mask contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The court also sentenced his former aide Koldo García to 19 years in prison and businessman Víctor de Aldama to four and a half years.
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The court found that Ábalos received a series of benefits in exchange for promoting business interests. These included a monthly payment of €10,000 for what were described as his “fixed expenses”, the payment of housing costs for a person in his inner circle and the hiring of two women linked to the former minister at public companies overseen by the Transport Ministry.
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The Supreme Court’s decision is particularly significant because it is the first major final conviction involving a former senior member of Sánchez’s administration.
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Yes, but Spain appears to be ‘special’ in that Sanchez has taken over the government exactly on the promise of cleaning up Spanish politics, but now we can see that his Socialists are the same as the far-right. And they are collaborating in very sensitive areas with the largest dictatorship in history.
The same? I’m not sure, this government appears to actually be held accountable when officials are corrupt now. Have you forgotten about M. Rajoy already? The Panama papers? No fucking consequences for our former clearly corrupt president. Not aides, not ministers, the president proper was found extremely corrupt, but since the judges are buddies, they could find any link between M. Rajoy and Mariano Rajoy, on a list where the fraud of the PP was listed, while Mariano Rajoy was president.
Come on dude…
I mean Trump promised he would ‘drain the swamp,’ I think personal corruption is personal corruption regardless of party.