The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, insists, two days after the UCO arrested the president and vice-president of the Provincial Council of Almería, for alleged irregular hirings linked to the case masks erupted in 2021, in defending the “immediate” action of his party, which suspended them from militancy as a precaution when the order of the judge investigating the case became known, and in insisting on the “surprise and amazement” that those arrests caused him, despite the fact that the investigation has been going on for four years now and the vice president and the mayor of Fines – another of the detainees – are accused for almost the same period. “When the judicial system started the process, in principle, based on information about open judicial procedures, there was no case,” he justified in an interview with public mirror, on the antenna 3.
With this explanation the popular baron wanted to explain why these two people had not been removed from their public roles before or the decision to suspend them from militancy had not been taken before. “When there is no cause, you cannot expel a person and practically condemn them to social death, because they are tied, we lead them to social ostracism, because they can no longer find work, they have no resources…”, said Moreno, despite these same statements from the then third vice president, Óscar Liria, arrested on 15 June 2021 on charges of having collected bribes between 200,000 and 400,000 euros from a contract for medical supplies awarded for two million euros, in full confinement, to the company of Kilian López – his childhood friend and under investigation for drug trafficking and drug trafficking – he was immediately expelled from the party and fired from all his positions.
The Prime Minister also recognized that within the Provincial Council, with the majority of the PP, a commission of inquiry was established, which was closed without responsibility (with the PSOE voting against and Vox abstaining) and that the same president of the Provincial Council of Almería, now detained, Javier Aureliano García, appeared at the Congress of Deputies as part of the commission of inquiry by the The Koldo case.
Moreno’s surprise is not limited to recognizing that, finally, and despite the fact that in this time the investigation has expanded to other contracts awarded by the provincial council to companies linked to the relatives of Liria and the mayor of Fines – who is the former’s uncle and also the uncle of the mask commissioner -, there was some reason in the investigation. The astonishment extends to the fact that the prisoners themselves, García and the vice president Fernando Giménez, could be linked to corruption because they belong to “a young generation”.
“The president of the Provincial Council himself is a person who has no family responsibilities, is single and comes from a family that has no financial problems. I was very surprised that he could be involved in this type of act,” de García said. As for Giménez, his right-hand man, the disbelief lies in the fact that “he is a person closely linked to religious movements”. “Everything was a surprise to us because, behind closed doors, they maintained exemplary and transparent behavior until the case came to light,” he insisted. The judge investigates them
Moreno has promised to “act with force” if it is proven that there was corruption in the PP of Almería, to try to contain the flight of votes from his party, hegemonic in that province, towards Vox, which is fighting to even be the first force thanks to its anti-immigration message. “It worries me because at the end of all this there is always only one beneficiary, which is Vox. They run a very simple campaign, the PSOE and the PP are the same thing,” said the popular leader, “What they look for are easy solutions to difficult problems, big headlines and little else,” he underlined.
