They declared as witnesses before Internal Affairs and explained that the reforms did not follow the established procedure
MADRID, 13 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Commanders of the Civil Guard who testified as witnesses before the Internal Affairs Service of the Benemérita assured that they had not claimed the works that are now being investigated in a Madrid court for alleged irregularities in their awarding, considering that the painting works commissioned were not among The priorities”. As they pointed out, the reforms were carried out after a “call” from Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jarava, or his team at the General Support Subdirectorate of the Armed Institute.
This is stated in the summary – to which Europa Press has had access – of the investigation that is being followed in the Investigating Court Number 3 of Madrid, where until now Vázquez Jarava appears as investigated; Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Alonso Rodríguez, who was head of the Civil Guard Command in Ávila between 2015 and 2017; the self-employed worker Salvador Gutiérrez; and the businessman from the Canary Islands Ángel Ramón Tejera de León, alias ‘Mon’, who also appears in the summary of the ‘Mediador’ case as a person linked to the investigated general Francisco Espinosa, who is in pretrial detention.
According to the information provided to the procedure, between August and September 2020 the Internal Affairs Service of the Civil Guard took a statement from at least a dozen commanders of the Benemérita about the works that were carried out in 2017 in barracks in different provinces of Spain.
One of the witnesses, who performed duties at the A Coruña Command, indicated to the investigators that -as he recalled- “among the priorities corresponding to the 2017 financial year were not the painting works carried out in the Ortigueira and follow”.
Another of those questioned, this one stationed at the Ortigueira Barracks (A Coruña), pointed out that for the works now investigated “the procedure” that was planned when undertaking repairs or work in the barracks facilities was not followed. As he recounted, they used to send the Command “up to three budgets and then, as a general rule, the cheapest one was chosen for its execution.” In this case, he assured that this was not done.
He explained that he received an email in which he was informed that the General Subdirectorate of Superior Support of the Executive Center –then in charge of Vázquez Jarava– had “decentralized credit for painting the facades of the barracks” and that the painting works they would be carried out by “a company contracted nationally”.
The brigade assured that he sent an email to the A Coruña Command in which he attached a certificate of “non-conformity with the work carried out”, although days later he sent a second email, this one with a certificate of “conformity”, for an invoice in which two items that appeared in the initial budget and that corresponded to “unexecuted work” were eliminated.
As he pointed out, it was possible to verify “by viewing the security cameras that the barracks have” that said work “had not been carried out.”
For his part, a sergeant who was stationed at the Sigüero barracks (A Coruña) assured the Internal Affairs investigators that he did not remember having raised any need for work in that barracks before the Command.
According to his testimony as a witness, the reform was carried out by one or two workers, “surprising him that they were not Galician” and that they carried out the works “on a weekend afternoon.”
On the sidelines, he pointed out that although he lacked the “necessary technical knowledge, the amount of the invoice seemed very expensive for the work carried out”, in reference to the repair of the façade, scraped, cork sprayed and painted, for which paid an invoice of 4,392.22 euros to the company Solocorcho SL –of which Ángel Ramón Tejera de León, alias ‘Mon’ was a partner and administrator–.
Likewise, another sergeant of the Civil Guard – assigned to the Tarazona de la Mancha Barracks (Albacete) – indicated that he “received a telephone call from the Albacete Command Support Bureau” in which they informed him that his barracks had been designated as a “pilot station” for “a test that consisted of the partial painting of a façade (…) in which an anti-humidity paint was used”.
In this sense, he specified that when the work was carried out, one of the workers gave him to understand that “it was a test and that if it was effective, the General Directorate of the Civil Guard would extend it to other barracks.”
Like other commanders of the Benemérita who testified as witnesses before Internal Affairs, this sergeant stated that none of the workers from the ‘Mon’ company went to the barracks before carrying out the works to determine the budget prior to the work to be carried out. .
In turn, it is clear that a lieutenant colonel of the Civil Guard assigned to the Albacete Command assured that with regard to the Tarazona de la Mancha and Riópar barracks, “just like the rest” of the barracks in the province, there was no status report or work proposal submitted to higher units or central bodies. He also pointed out that he had received a phone call from Vázquez Jarava, who told him that the ‘Mon’ company used “a technique for waterproofing facades that offered good results.”
These statements were contributed to the case that has been paralyzed in the Madrid court for at least eight months pending an expert report on the works carried out in 13 Civil Guard headquarters: those of Murcia, Albacete, Algeciras, Alicante, Badajoz, Castellón , Huelva, Jaén, La Coruña, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Toledo.
Specifically, Internal Affairs figures the amount of the works awarded between 2008 and 2019 by said territorial units of the Benemérita to the companies managed by ‘Mon’ at 3.3 million euros, despite stating that some of them were not executed or were carried out partially, “what could be constitutive of the crimes of falsification of an official document, falsification of a commercial document and embezzlement”.
