Criminal Corruption in Spain: UN Tourism SG Zurab Pololikashvili in Trouble?

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The Koldo corruption case is developing as one of the most prominent criminal investigation of high level government in Spain. UNWTO seems to be deeply involved.

A Ferrari, a football club president, and the honorary consul for Georgia is Víctor de Aldama, the alleged mastermind in the Koldo case.

Alleged election fraud in UNWTO – is the truth finally emerging?

The Koldo case is making news these days as a multi-million dollar criminal corruption and money laundering case involving the Spanish administration’s elite, including the President’s wife. It involves a multi-million dollar scam, taking advantage of the COVID crisis to import and resell urgently needed facemasks.

Besides Víctor de Aldama, Koldo García and Juan Carlos Cueto are some of the key figures in the plot.

The current UN Tourism Secretary-General is Zurab Pololikashvili, the former Georgian ambassador to Spain. Pololikashvili was instrumental in getting Victor de Aldama to become Georgia’s honorable consul. Victor attended the 112th session of the UNWTO Executive Council in Georgia from 15 to 17 September 2020.

Corruption and illegal manipulation allegations had been swirling around the activities of the UN Tourism Secretary even before he was first elected using questionable methods in 2017.

On May 10, 2017, Atletico Madrid won 2:1 against Real Madrid at the Champions League Semi-Final Football Game at Vicente Calderon Stadium Madrid. May 10, 2017, was also the first day members of the UNWTO executive council met at the Melia Castilla Hotel in Madrid. The hottest issue for the council was the election of a new secretary-general. The day of the election was May 12, the last day of the executive council meeting.

Candidate Zurab Pololikashvili was a member of Real Madrid. According to his CV, he was CEO of FC Dinamo Tbilisi for ten years, from 2001 to 2011. Dinamo Tbilisi is the leading professional football team in Georgia.

Pololikashvil loves football and knows how the spirit of bonding through sports could get him closer to the people he needs to impress. As a member of the Real Madrid football team, Pololikashvili was able to do the impossible. Two days before the election for UNWTO Secretary-General in Madrid, he secured a block of tickets for this popular sold-out football game.

Zurab needed African votes because Africa had already committed to his rival in the UNWTO Secretary-General election, Dr. Walter Mzembi, from Zimbabwe.

Georgian embassy officials in Madrid got to work and hand-picked UNWTO executive council members to receive a free ticket for the sold-out Real Madrid football game on May 10. On May 12, these candidates were to vote for the new secretary general.

Georgian officials delivered a block of tickets to those candidates using embassy channels in Madrid. At that time, the chair of the executive council in Madrid was Abulfas Garaye, the Minister of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan. He did nothing to stop Candidate Zurab from providing such tickets to African ministers who most likely voted for him the next day.

A few years later, at the next election, he did it again. During COVID, Zurab made the impossible possible by manipulating the 112th session of the executive council to position the voting day for his second term amid the COVID crisis, preventing other potential candidates from competing. Hardly anyone was able to travel to Madrid at that time.

Manipulation for the Secretary-General’s re-election bloomed, and there seems to be a lot more to the story.

It now comes to light that the person accused of masterminding the current Koldo corruption case in Spain was attending this 112th session of the UNWTO Executive Council, most likely to pave the way for Zurabs’s re-election and possibly maneuver the issues currently investigated in the now ongoing criminal Koldo case in Spain.

Here is where the Globalia (Air Europe) group and its subsidiary Wakalua, a company created in March 2019, a year before the COVID pandemic, came in. It involved its linkage to the IE African Center, directed by Pedro Sánchez, the wife of the Spanish President.

Three sources claim that the former director of the tourism promotion hub Globalia  (Wakalua), in collaboration with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), had several telephone conversations at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with Pedro Sánchez. 

Pedro Sánchez’s wife held two private meetings with the CEO of Globalia at the company’s headquarters in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid) and a third virtual discussion in June and July 2020.

Gómez made arrangements with the then-CEO of Wakalua, Leticia Lauffer, to import masks and respirators from China to Spain at the beginning of the COVID lockdown.

Globalia subsidiary allegedly strengthened ties with Begoña Gómez and sponsored an event organized by the IE African Center in London.

In January 2024, at FITUR, President  Sánchez visits the Globalia stand and hugs its president, Juan José Hidalgo.

UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said in January 2020:

IE Africa Center aims to revolutionize how the next generation of global executives understands African innovation, past and present.

The center’s vision is to promote an African-centric view of modernity and the future by partnering with African innovators and their institutions on the continent and across the diaspora to build academic content and research designed to reshape the world. The IE Africa Center collaborates with knowledge experts and thought leaders to bring the African perspective to global conversations on humanities, education, and social innovation.

“Thanks to the collaboration between the UNWTO and Globalia, with the inestimable support of Barrabés, we have placed tourism on the innovation map, where it deserves a special position because it is at the forefront of innovative business models, supply-and-demand relationships, and job creation.  It is one of the few sectors that grow year after year worldwide and is uniquely resilient.”

In March 2020, Globalia was awarded 1.2 million for transport masks and 4.3 million for charter flights. In short, the Sanchez government injected 25 million into Globalia after Begona Gomez posed at the airline’s events.

Sanchez’s global sponsorship of Globalia exceeds 641 million.

The UNWTO, the second sponsor, is also indebted to Sánchez. After it was renovated for 72 million euros, its Madrid headquarters received free rent. This provides Zurab with the means to finance his General assemblies and projects. The meetings between Sánchez and the head of the UNWTO are repeated.

Fashion News reported: “Pedro Sánchez’s wife wore a satin blouse and blue jacket at the invitation of Pololikashvili, secretary general of the UNWTO, in which world tourism trends were presented.”

After reading the many press stories, it becomes clear that the scam involves millions of illegal profits due to illegal markups for face masks for the people of Spain, over-inflated rates for charter flights, and more.

About the author

Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz has continuously worked in the travel and tourism industry since he was a teenager in Germany (1977).
He founded eTurboNews in 1999 as the first online newsletter for the global travel tourism industry.

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