• Formation: The witness protected from the formation fraud claims justice
  • UGT case: The union asks to imprison the employee who uncovered fraud in Andalusia
  • Invercaria case.The defenses try to dismantle the Invercaria corruption case

One morning, when he gets up, Cristóbal Cantos discovers that his bank account is at zero and all your assets are seized. In the office of the Junta de Andalucía where he works, the official Teodoro Montes is emptied and, little by little, he is left with nothing to do until one day they open a disciplinary record, despite accumulating more than three decades of impeccable work.

Roberto Macías tries to re-engage in the labor market, but is stigmatized: he was administrative in the Andalusian federation of UGT, from where they allegedly diverted more than 41.7 million euros of grants from the Andalusian Government. The three are denouncers of corruption cases and the three have suffered the unspeakable - harassment, threats, complaints, detentions and even searches in their homes - in recent years after uncovering Pandora's box and bringing to evidence the colossal fraud with public money that was in the macrocause of Invercaria, the UGT case and in the plot of the training courses. These three cases add up to an alleged diversion of aid and public funds of over 200 million euros.

Cristóbal Cantos, a former Invercaria director, could not think of everything that was going to fall on him to uncover the shifts that he witnessed in this venture capital company of the Board during the stage of the previous governments of the PSOE

The latter has been the complaint that the main accused of this macrocause, Tomás Pérez-Sauquillo , former president of Invercaria, has just filed for false testimony and procedural fraud. It is not the only obstacle he has had to face. They also complained against him when the case broke out in 2012, in the midst of the electoral campaign of the Andalusian elections, and the sound recordings that Cantos had made while his then boss Laura Gómeiz gave him instructions to falsify company files that They had received public funds.

Cristóbal Cantos, although he denounced the Invercaria case , also appears as an investigator - previously charged - in two of the pieces torn from the macrocause. Therefore, the court executed the seizure of their accounts , which remained for a long month of August, until the civil liability insurance that covered Invercaria workers arrived, which allowed them to dispose of their assets.

Roberto Macías, one of the key witnesses of the accusation in the UGT case, will also sit on the bench on November 28 . On it hangs a petition for the conviction of three years in prison of the Prosecutor and four years of UGT-A for revealing secrets , after the accounting excesses of this union came to light.

UGT-A accuses Macías of making a "mass copy" of 32 folders containing some 22,500 files, which "at least in part were published in the press since April 21, 2013," according to the union's indictment.

Comilonas at the fair

Among the most striking diversion of subsidies documented by this newspaper are the feasts at the April Fair in the UGT-A booth and the 700 briefcases manufactured in Asia that were distributed in a regional congress of the union. All of them were paid from funds coming from the European Union - and distributed by the Board - that had to have been allocated to the fight against unemployment.

Following the complaint by UGT, the National Police searched Macías's home in search of the union's accounting records. The former UGT worker now complains that, while he will be prosecuted soon, the alleged millionaire grant diversion plot remains stuck in the court of instruction.

The official Teodoro Montes, known as the witness protected from training fraud, reported to the courts a host of irregularities in the management and distribution of millionaire grants granted by the Board for the courses. After that, they made his life impossible in the Employment Delegation where he worked.

Now he is retired, but continues to litigate in court to try to knock down the false closure of the disciplinary record that the Board unfairly opened during the stage of the socialist Susana Díaz as president and was filed with the new executive of the PP and Citizens. Years ago, Montes was almost walled in the Employment office where he worked in Seville, where they built a partition to isolate him from the rest. The TSJA condemned the Andalusian Government for harassment in 2012 for these events.

"I would do it a thousand times"

Uncovering corruption has had a high cost for Cantos, Montes and Macías, but the three agree, with nuances, that they would do it again and that it is worth it.

«I would do it a thousand times again», responds to THE WORLD sharply Theodore Montes, who has not regretted «never» to have taken the step. Yes, he regrets "not having done it before and more bluntly, although if I have dropped like this, what would have happened if I did it before?"

Roberto Macías takes a few seconds to respond. «Is it worth reporting corruption? Yes, but we should do it with the maximum guarantees because you put your work, your future and your assets in jeopardy ». After being fired by UGT, he has not found job stability. Since last July he is unemployed. To pay for your defense and get your family forward you must ask for favors.

The former UGT worker has been mobilizing for years, together with Ana Garrido , witness of the Gürtel case, and former Army Lieutenant Luis Gonzalo Segura , so that the Government approves a comprehensive law that protects whistleblowers of corruption . They have met with all the parliamentary groups in the Congress of Deputies, they have gone to the European Parliament ... but the protection does not come.

Sources around Cristóbal Cantos indicated that he is proud to have denounced the Invercaria case and to have done his duty, but they destroy your life. It is of the opinion that the corrupt take advantage of the weaknesses of the system and ends up crushing the complainant. Therefore, if someone witnesses a corruption issue, they don't know if they would recommend taking a step forward and going to court or running without looking back.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • UGT
  • PP
  • National Police
  • Susana Díaz
  • Citizens
  • PSOE
  • Invercaria Case
  • Corruption
  • Andalusia

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