The first vice president of the Government and acting Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, has indicated that neither the Ministry of Defense nor the Ministry of Commerce have yet received official notification of the purchase by the Saudi SRC of 9.9% of Telefónica. She indicated this in a press conference within the framework of the G20 Summit in New Delhi, in India, where she assured that she did not have the opportunity to speak during the meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince about the operation.
Calviño has stressed that the Government used all the necessary mechanisms to guarantee the protection of Spain’s strategic interests in the face of this operation which, he has stressed, must be dealt with through the “available mechanisms of the Spanish legal system.” In this way, it has been specified that the official notification to the Government would be the “step” by which the evaluation process by the Executive would be launched.
“We will analyze with all rigor this and other operations that will occur and we will apply, of course, all the available instruments to defend the general interest and the strategic interest of our country, as we have been doing since day one,” Calviño stated. .
