The magistrate will listen to his wife that same day for her alleged participation in crimes of bribery and money laundering
MADRID, 27 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The judge of the National Court in charge of the investigation of the ‘Lezo case’ will take a statement on January 12 as investigated the former deputy general director of construction of the Directorate of Roads for Development under the government of the PP Luis Manuel Bruno Romero, who supposedly received a series of commissions by those responsible for the construction company OHL.
Legal sources have confirmed to Europa Press that on the same day the head of the Central Investigating Court Number 6, Manuel García Castellón, will also take a statement as Bruno’s wife being investigated. Initially, the instructor set both citations on January 16, but rescheduled the statement for the 12th at the request of a lawyer with a matching appointment.
It was on July 18 when the judge issued an order in which he warned about the alleged participation that both Bruno Romero and his wife, Ana Esther Cueto, would have had in crimes of bribery and money laundering. Specifically, the instructor focuses on the “trace of an alleged payment of commissions by OHL managers to a public official” –which would be Bruno himself– as is clear from the documentation provided to the case.
The magistrate then referred to a conversation between two senior managers of OHL: Paulino Hernández and Francisco Javier Peláez, the latter being the economic-administrative head of civil works for the construction company in Eastern Andalusia. “This afternoon Manolo Bruno had to call me (…) to tell me about the, about tomorrow’s work, about Calicasas,” explains one of them.
Among the clues on which the instructor relies to call Bruno to court are “several Excel sheets that presumably record the commissions paid by OHL.” In them there is a column with the title “MB”, coinciding with the initials of Manolo Bruno, in which amounts are noted in the margin of some works that appear in the adjoining column.
“Among them is the Variante de Albaida N-340 awarded for 6,506,881 euros for which a commission of 19,520 euros is recorded, an amount that coincides with the 0.3% referred to by the participants in the aforementioned audio. According to the document “ED OC consumed total” that is incorporated as Annex 3 to Report No. 548 of October 10, 2018 of the UCO, OHL would have paid “MB” at least 1,087,000 euros,” said the judge.
The magistrate pointed out in July that “according to intelligence information” the couple is the owner of an account “in which since its opening on July 14, 2006 they have made cash deposits – generally round amounts – for a total of 617,000 euros”.
Both Bruno and Cueto, according to the judge, “are domiciled in a duplex house” located in Madrid “which is also the registered office of Sistemas Madrileños SL”, the company that acquired that property together with two parking spaces in a deed of 18 September 2006 for 963,000 euros.
“According to the above, Luis Manuel Bruno Romero, directly or through his spouse or an intermediary company, would have had 1.6 million euros in cash and would have acquired a property during the time he held his position in the Ministry de Fomento, coinciding with the award to the OHL entity by said body of contracts for the execution of public works”, maintains the instructor.
And the fact is that, added the judge, “according to all the indications” Bruno “is the same person whom the investigated Paulino Hernández Ros and Francisco Javier Peláez Toré -senior officials of OHL– identify as Manolo Bruno and with whom they supposedly they had agreed a commission of 0.3%”.
In this separate piece number 8 of the ‘Lezo case’, the judge investigates alleged crimes of bribery attributable to different officials and public officials, as well as to some OHL employees for the alleged payment of illegal commissions for the award of certain public works to said business group in various parts of the national territory.
On July 19, the instructor issued an order in which he agreed to extend the investigations until January 29 in view of the new documentation, which made it “reasonable to infer that the analysis of the same” derived “the need to carry out new procedures” .
