Overview

• Judge Leopoldo Puente rejected Koldo García’s request to recover seized devices and refused to pause the case, citing ongoing analysis of roughly 10 terabytes of material and pending expurgation.
• Puente set Koldo’s declaration for October 16 and noted José Luis Ábalos is due a day earlier, saying Koldo can offer any alternative explanation to the police reports at his appearance.
• The court has not yet provided full cloned copies of the phones, with the judge saying they will be returned as soon as feasible once analysis and filtering are complete.
• A separate ‘sensitive information’ file was created for WhatsApps tied to Ábalos’s private life, which parties may review on site but cannot copy until an oral trial opens.
• The UCO report, accepted by the court as showing consistent indicia of economic links between Ábalos and Koldo, is disputed by both men, who deny illicit payments and reject the reading of coded terms such as “chistorras.”