The former president of the Administrator of Railway Infrastructures (Adif), Isabel Pardo de Vera, has assured that she was not aware of the alleged payment of "commissions or considerations" by companies in exchange for rigging public works contracts, and maintains that it is "implausible" that she had real capacity to favor certain companies.
This is stated in a document to which Europa Press has had access, in which she offers an alternative version to the conclusions of the report from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard that served as the basis for her indictment in the case being followed in the National Court (AN) regarding alleged rigging of public works contracts in exchange for illegal commissions, one of the pieces of the 'Koldo case'.
In the document sent to the investigating magistrate Ismael Moreno, Pardo de Vera denies that she had "autonomous, direct, and effective capacity to favor certain companies in railway works contracts, outside or above the ordinary chain of reports, controls" or "authorizations" that "integrate such files".
"The condition of president of Adif allows for institutional intervention in certain acts of approval, elevation, organic signature, or procedural authorization. But that institutional intervention does not equate to material capacity to predetermine the awardee or score the offer," she argues in her reasoning.
Defense of her role and request for new proceedings
Furthermore, she reasons that "the position cannot replace the act, the conversation cannot replace the document, Koldo's statement cannot replace the file, and the temporal proximity cannot replace the link between a personal action and an administrative result".
In the same document, the former head of Adif requests the judge to send an official letter to the railway manager to forward to the court the final certification report of the works executed by Levantina de Ingeniería y Construcción (LIC), one of the companies under investigation, signed by the deputy director of Analysis of Actions and Internal Control.
The defense emphasizes that, starting from an initial budget of 489,300 euros, Adif ended up recognizing the company 373,405.45 euros for the "works effectively executed".
In a ruling to which this agency has had access, Judge Moreno acknowledges receipt of the document submitted by the representation of Pardo de Vera and requests the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office to report on the advisability of carrying out the requested diligence.
References to Koldo García and absence of patrimonial indications
The former president of Adif argues that the mentions of her figure made by the former ministerial advisor Koldo García, convicted in the 'mask case' and also charged in this procedure, "do not alter that conclusion."
"Beyond questions, insinuations, or expressions from Koldo García, the responses from Isabel Pardo de Vera are evasive, do not reveal a commitment to results, an award order, or acceptance of an illicit purpose. On the contrary, various passages have exculpatory value or are incompatible with the thesis of effective collaboration," she adds.
In this line, she concludes that her indictment "cannot rest on inferences constructed from unverified conversations of Koldo García, but solely on rationally founded indications based on objective and verified data in the case."
Precisely at this point, she emphasizes that the UCO bases a good part of its narrative on supposed economic counter-performances associated with certain public works awards. However, she defends that the agents place those supposed counter-performances "in third parties or business environments unrelated" to her.
"No patrimonial flow towards her, intermediary company, account, asset, payment, promise, or economic advantage associated with her person is identified. Not even the slightest indication is reflected that she was aware of the existence of those alleged counter-performances," she states in her document.
Conversations between Koldo and Santos Cerdán
Likewise, she argues that "to sustain an indictment for prevarication, influence peddling, fraud in contracting, or belonging to a criminal organization, it would be essential to identify the specific act of influence, the instruction given, the recipient body, the altered document, the false technical data, the knowledge of its injustice, and the causal link with the result," something that, in her opinion, in this case "is not done."
On the other hand, the former leader of Adif refers to a conversation between Koldo and the former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE Santos Cerdán, also investigated, recorded by the UCO in a report. In that exchange, the former advisor wrote: "He told Jose, what do you want us to help with? (...) he did the opposite, he blocked. I mean, he gave them nothing."
Pardo de Vera emphasizes that the Civil Guard pointed out that "the reason for this disagreement would have been that she would not have agreed to help the company that Ábalos had indicated, but rather the opposite, blocking it from public contracts."
"Koldo does not describe Pardo de Vera as an effective collaborator nor as someone who would agree to his demands, but rather as a person in front of whom he expresses frustration precisely because she would not have facilitated what was intended to be attributed to her," concludes the defense.