Former Spanish Transport Minister sentenced to 24 years in prison over corruption in COVID-19 contracts
Former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos received the harshest sentence ever handed down to a modern Spanish minister after being convicted of running a criminal network that pocketed millions from emergency Covid-19 contracts.
The Spanish Supreme Court has sentenced a former minister and former official of the Spanish Socialist Party to 24 years and three months behind bars for his role in a criminal organization, bribery, embezzlement, and influence peddling.
José Luis Ábalos, the former Minister of Transport and former Organization Secretary of the ruling party, was found guilty alongside two co-conspirators in the so-called "Masks case"—a sprawling corruption scandal that first erupted in early 2024. The court ruled that Ábalos and his advisor, Koldo García, accepted systemic bribes in exchange for awarding lucrative public contracts for face masks and other medical supplies during the chaotic early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The judicial ruling outlined distinct penalties for the three main architects of the plot, handing Ábalos a sentence of 24 years and three months in prison. However, the court established a legal cap on his continuous time served, meaning the maximum time he will actually spend behind bars is 15 years and 18 months.
Koldo García was sentenced to 19 years and eight months for leveraging his proximity to the ministry. Meanwhile, businessman Víctor de Aldama received a sentence of four and a half years but will avoid immediate prison time because he cooperated extensively with the prosecution. The Supreme Court suspended the execution of Aldama’s sentence on the condition that he does not commit another crime, submits a semi-annual activity report, and completes one year of community service.
According to the ruling, the criminal ring relied on a transactional abuse of institutional power. Judges highlighted that Ábalos provided his "authority" and "direct influence" whenever necessary to smooth the way for contracts, receiving a steady kickback of 10,000 euro a month from October 2019 until June 2022.
Aldama, for his part, was "the one in charge" of "locating companies or individuals" interested in administrative procedures, "articulating their interests" to ensure they would "prevail with preference and arbitrarily before it." This fraudulent mediation was conducted "always in exchange for the corresponding economic compensation, which he equally shared with José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García," the ruling concluded.
The illicit deal also extended to personal favors, with the network financing the rent of a luxury apartment in central Madrid for Jessica Rodríguez, Ábalos’s partner at the time. To "guarantee" that Ábalos could smoothly "collect the illicit commissions" generated by the mask procurement contracts, the former minister and the businessman "entered into a lease agreement with an option to buy" a property owned by Aldama, setting an acquisition "price" that sat far below the real market value.