A corruption trial of a former right-hand man to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez begins on Tuesday, a politically explosive case that has threatened to topple the Socialist-led minority government.
Jose Luis Abalos is a disgraced ex-Socialist heavyweight, a former transport minister who helped propel Sanchez to power in 2018. The case is one of several corruption affairs rattling the fragile coalition.
Abalos and his former adviser Koldo Garcia are suspected of having pocketed kickbacks for handing out public contracts worth millions of euros for sanitary equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Supreme Court in Madrid will judge them for alleged bribery, embezzlement, influence peddling, membership of a criminal organization and misuse of confidential information. The men deny the charges.
Prosecutors want Abalos to serve 24 years in jail. They portray him as the mastermind of a scheme of illicit enrichment. They have called for a 19-year term for Garcia, who they say was a key intermediary.
They argued in court that both men had abused their government positions and contacts to favor the interests of businessman Victor de Aldama, who has already admitted his role in the vast and complex affair.
Abalos has consistently protested that the investigation has been unfair.
"I feel like I am living in a fiction," he told the conservative daily El Mundo in November, shortly before his arrest. "I cannot believe the prosecutor's office is asking for 24 years in jail for me."
Garcia also protested in comments to an investigatory committee of the Navarre regional parliament.
"I am in jail without proof that I've committed any crime," he said, speaking by video link from his place of pre-trial detention.
More than 75 witnesses and about 20 experts are to testify during the proceedings, which are due to run through April.
- Succession of scandals -
The investigation also appears to have ensnared Abalos's successor in the powerful post of Socialist organization secretary, Santos Cerdan.
Caught up in another case of suspected corruption for public works contracts, he has been forced to step down from what is a key position in the party.
The fall from grace of Abalos and Cerdan -- two of Sanchez's closest allies -- has embarrassed a leader who took power promising to clean up Spanish politics.
He took over from the main conservative Popular Party (PP) after it had been engulfed in its own graft scandal.
Separate corruption investigations into Sanchez's wife Begona Gomez and his brother David, who faces trial later this year, have piled further pressure on the government, one of few leftist administrations in Europe.
Both the PP and far-right opposition party Vox have called for Sanchez's resignation and early elections. They argue that the scandals expose systemic Socialist corruption that reaches the premier himself.
Sanchez has always denied any illegal funding of the Socialists and rebuffed calls for polls before the next scheduled general election, due in 2027.
