Businessman Víctor de Aldama will stand trial in a civil defamation case brought by Spain’s Minister for the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños. A preliminary hearing at Madrid’s Court of Instance ended without a settlement, with the trial set for February 17, according to legal sources cited by elDiario.es.
Bolaños filed the claim in May, alleging that Aldama had damaged his right to honour by making unsupported statements to the media and on social networks. He is seeking €70,000 in compensation for damages.
Aldama made the allegation during an appearance on a Telemadrid programme, saying that Bolaños had contacted him through his communications chief, Ramón Bermejo, to offer money in exchange for his silence. Asked by the presenter whether Bolaños had personally called Bermejo, Aldama replied that he had.
In his response to the lawsuit, Aldama’s defence cited Bermejo’s account of calls made between March and July 2024 to telephone numbers at the Socialist Party’s Ferraz headquarters and government departments at Moncloa. The defence said money was offered during those contacts. Aldama submitted bills that, according to legal sources, show calls by Bermejo to the switchboards of the Congress of Deputies and the PSOE; the calls lasted between 26 seconds and two minutes and 10 seconds.
The defence also said that, according to Bermejo, people acting on Bolaños’s behalf took part in the calls, including former chief of staff Rafael Oñate. Oñate left the post in November 2023, months before the alleged conversations.
The court admitted Bolaños’s claim and sought submissions from Aldama and the Public Prosecutor’s Office on whether the case should proceed. Aldama had been convicted of corruption in the Ábalos case; the Supreme Court suspended his entry into prison over his alleged cooperation with the authorities. He entered prison in October 2024 in connection with a major fuel-sector fraud case and then began cooperating with the justice system.
Sources: elDiario.es.