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Tuesday, 14 July 2026
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Spain·Health

Spain's Supreme Court hears how adviser pressured officials to double mask order during pandemic

Tuesday, 14 April 2026, 22:10 · 1 min read

Spain's Supreme Court (the country's highest judicial body) is hearing testimony in a corruption trial over emergency mask purchases made during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. A former senior official at the Transport Ministry testified that Koldo García, adviser to then-minister José Luis Ábalos, pushed to double a government mask order to eight million units from a company linked to businessman Víctor de Aldama, telling him it was "eight million or nothing" — with Ábalos signing the revised order just 38 minutes after the original. The case centres on allegations that Ábalos, García, and Aldama formed a criminal association to profit from public contracts awarded during the pandemic emergency, when standard procurement rules were suspended, making the trial a significant test of accountability for high-level corruption in Spain.

Sources
El PaísPor fin se habla de mascarillas en el Tribunal Supremo ↗︎El PaísUn ex alto cargo de Transportes declara que Koldo le instó a duplicar la compra de mascarillas a la empresa de Aldama: “Ocho millones o nada” ↗︎
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