Spain’s Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a former close ally of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez into custody in a corruption investigation that has threatened to topple the leftist government.
The probe into José Luis Ábalos, a former transport minister and Socialist party heavyweight who helped propel Sánchez to power in 2018, is one of several corruption affairs rattling his fragile minority coalition.
Ábalos, his ex-adviser Koldo García and another former senior Socialist figure, Santos Cerdán, are suspected of pocketing kickbacks for the awarding of public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ábalos and García will be remanded in custody without bail on suspicion of bribery, influence peddling, embezzlement and for an “extreme” flight risk, the Supreme Court said in a statement.
“Numerous rational indications of criminality exist against both,” and the measures ordered against them came “combined with a foreseeably imminent trial”, the court added.
Prosecutors have demanded 24 years in jail for Ábalos, who was expelled from the Socialist party and sits as an independent MP in parliament, and 19 and a half years for García.
Cerdán, who was released last week, spent almost five months in jail after relinquishing his powerful post as Socialist organisation secretary and as an MP.
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The scandal has rocked a government that came to power promising to clean up Spanish politics after the main conservative Popular Party was convicted in its own graft affair.
The crisis also briefly threatened to rip apart the Socialist-led coalition with the far-left Sumar party and heightened speculation of early elections.
Sánchez has denied any irregular funding of the Socialist party and refused to call snap elections, saying last month that “all spending has been accounted for, credited and audited”.
Separate corruption probes have ensnared the prime minister’s wife Begoña Gómez as well as his younger brother David Sánchez.
The legal troubles compound woes for the minority government, which struggles to pass legislation.
