2023-09-08 12:50:18
Updated Friday, September 8, 2023 – 12:50
The Minister of Defense assures that she will evaluate “with all seriousness” whether she should give permission to STC to reach 9.9% in the operator
The acting Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, this Friday in videoconferenceJ.P.GANDULEFE
The acting Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, has promised “rigor” when evaluating the Saudi request to reach 9.9% of the capital in Telefónica and rejects a possible “exchange” of her guarantee for the business operation to achieve the sale of corvettes. “Evidently we are going to study it very rigorously, with great attention, because this operation effectively affects a strategic sector, which is defense.”Robles said after a videoconference with Navy banks in statements provided by the Ministry.
The Minister of Defense assures that she has “no evidence” that the fact that Saudi Arabia’s negotiations with Navantia for the sale of five corvettes have not yet fructified implies a retention of the contract by Riyadh, but warns that it does not. accepts as a negotiating weapon: “The Spanish Government would never accept any type of exchange in that sense.”
EL MUNDO publishes this Friday that the firm order for five corvettes valued at 2,000 million has not occurred even ten months after the memorandum of understanding signed by the president of Navantia, Ricardo Domnguezand the Saudi Deputy Minister of Defense, Khaled bin Hussein Al-Bayari, who is also one of the key administrators of STC Group, the Arab telecommunications giant that has entered into Telefónica.
At the moment, Robles believes that the fact that there is still no contract with the corvettes and the emergence of the Spanish operator has “absolutely nothing to do with it”, but he has referred to Navantia. And in the state company they assure that the conversations with the Saudis continue on the technical level of the design of the corvettes and, although they admit that they have not yet translated into a firm order, they downplay the importance of the calendar.
The fact that Telefnica is an important supplier to the Spanish Army has meant that it is the Ministry of Defense and not the Ministry of the Economy that must decide whether to authorize STC Group to exceed its current 4.9% of the capital to the 9.9% it aspires to. After a few days of silence, Robles has used a cold tone with the Saudi request. “Defense is essential and fundamental, and precisely the regulations that Spain has wanted to be very strict when there are foreign investments that can accept defense and security,” he stressed. “The priority for us is that the national defense is always absolutely protected,” he added. However, he has not seconded the line of the second vice president, Yolanda Diaz, against the authorization. Robles has limited himself to insisting that he will evaluate the case “with great rigor and great attention.”
The Saudi group has not yet presented a formal request, but the last one to present it to the Department of Robles. In 2018, the minister was involved in an important diplomatic incident with Saudi Arabia by refusing to sell weapons due to the war in Yemen, but the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, ordered relations to be redirected and military sales continued. For this reason, in November 2022, Navantia signed a memorandum of understanding in Riyadh to try to sell another five corvettes.
On the other hand, the minister has alleged that there are “other priorities” of her department to justify the paralysis of the “partial proposal to repair the ‘Aifos’ sailboat that the King sometimes uses.” Felipe VI. He has explained that “There was no proposal to buy any sailboat” to replace the ‘Aifos’. “It was a proposal for a repair that was not yet finished and there are other priorities,” she commented.
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