The judge asks for an opinion from the Prosecutor’s Office and parties before deciding on the fate of the case, whose investigation concluded more than a year ago
MADRID, 8 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The General Intervention of the State Administration (IGAE) has sent to the judge of the National High Court that investigates the alleged irregular awards to alleged donors of the ‘box b’ of the Popular Party a report in which it does not highlight irregularities contrary to the regulations in the processing of different files and public works contracts.
In a report dated last November 4 and sent to the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 5, to which Europa Press has had access, the technicians focus on “the regularity in the processing of the files and the existence or not of deficiencies in the documentation and regulated valuations for its resolution of the files of contracting of works and services sent by companies and public entities”.
Throughout 94 pages, the technicians give details on contracting files processed, among others, by the Ministries of Defense, Development and Environment, but also by the Public Land Entity (SEPES) or AENA.
Legal sources have explained to this news agency that the judge has transferred the document to the Prosecutor’s Office and to the parties, who have been asked to make a statement. The magistrate will decide whether he files the case or dictates an order to go to abbreviated procedure after obtaining a final opinion from all of them about the aforementioned report.
The judge summoned for this Thursday the two technicians responsible for the aforementioned document after they had not sent him the report after giving them two requirements. Now, and after his presentation, the same sources explain to Europa Press that this summons has been rendered ineffective.
In those sent so far, the IGAE had been reflecting irregularities. Thus, in one dated December 16, 2021, “very notable deviations” were highlighted in a contract awarded in 2003 by the Ministry of the Environment to Constructora Hispánica SA, a company investigated in the ‘Gürtel’ plot.
Specifically, the 2021 report focused on the contract for the environmental recovery and restoration of the Marismas del Joyel in the Marismas de Santoña and Noja nature reserve, in Cantabria.
The aforementioned document indicated that this award, which dates back to March 25, 2003, was closed at an amount of 1,492,152 euros. Then, the IGAE assured that there was an extra cost of 28,633.39 euros, which represented 1.74% of the contract that already had a modified 9.99%, for which it would exceed the limit percentage and would have required the report of the Service Inspection.
This last report signed by the two IGAE technicians, however, does not highlight any irregularity in the terms in which the government control body itself referred in its previous analysis.
The case, known as that of the ‘finalist commissions’, was initiated by Judge Pablo Ruz in 2013, but he closed it two years later when he saw no more criminal evidence than that of the payment of the reform of the ‘popular’ headquarters of Genoa with those off-the-books funds. However, what was revealed by the leader of the ‘Gürtel’, Francisco Correa, during the trial for the first period of the corrupt plot allowed it to be reactivated.
The former treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenas, who until then had denied it, confessed in a letter sent to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office that some of the donations made were seeking awards. In his statement of July 16, 2021 before Pedraz, he directly implicated all the Ministers of Development and Environment of the PP by stating that they were dealing with the businessmen who contributed to that alleged unofficial accounting.
Specifically, he recounted an episode that his predecessor in the PP Treasury, the late Álvaro Lapuerta, would have transmitted to him in his day. According to Bárcenas, Lapuerta went to the general director of State Highways and the then minister, Francisco Álvarez Cascos, scolded him, indicating that he should always go to him for these matters.
Judge Pedraz ended these investigations on July 29, 2021, pending this latest IGAE report, based on which he will make a final decision on the future of the case.
