[2] Following a referral by the Partido Popular mayor of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, in April 2022 the Prosecution Ministry opened an investigation into Soluciones de Gestión y Apoyo a Empresas (SGAE), a business support firm, over six suspicious public contracts awarded to it for the sale of health equipment in the COVID-19 pandemic, which were not subject to the usual bidding process out of urgent need.
[4] Even in 2020, the lawyer Ramiro Grau Morancho had warned Sánchez's government that using SGAE as the sole supplier of health equipment to Spain was questionable, given that they had no prior experience in such departments.
[5] On 6 September 2023, the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office filed charges to the Audiencia Nacional against seven public figures, including Koldo García Izaguirre, the former advisor to Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos.
On 21 February 2024, the Guardia Civil arrested 20 people including Koldo García and his wife Patricia Úriz, on suspicion of misusing his relationships with Ábalos and other key government figures to obtain public contracts for SGAE, and taking commission on it.
[8][9][10] On 4 March 2024, the EPPO announced that it would investigate the Canaries and Balearic governments' purchase of masks, and Audiencia Nacional judge Manuel García-Castellón agreed to hear the case.
On 26 June 2024, the Supreme Court handed the case to the Audiencia Nacional, refusing to hear it as EU financial interests were not directly affected.
On 8 October 2024, the Central Operative Unit of the Guardia Civil handed a report to judges suggesting that former minister José Luis Ábalos had a large role in the case.
The report also touched on the Delcygate scandal in 2020, where Venezuelan vice-president Delcy Rodríguez met Ábalos and De Aldama in Madrid despite both knowing that the former was banned from the Schengen Area under sanctions against Nicolás Maduro's government.
De Aldama said that he had given bribes to PSOE organisation secretary Santos Cerdán (€15,000), then-Finance Minister María Jesús Montero (€25,000), to Koldo García (€200,000) and to Ábalos (€400,000).