• Basque Country The Senegalese with a million euros smuggled botched fakes into Basque health

  • Scam A Senegalese collects more than a million euros in Basque social aid with 62 false identities

The commissioner of the Ertzaintza

José Carlos Rioja

ruled out last December 2021 informing his own colleagues or the National Police of the falsification of passports used by

ON

in the fraud of Basque social aid for a total of 1,091,000 euros.

The Basque Police command acts as a "liaison" between the

Basque Employment Service-Lanbide

and the

Ertzaintza

without the workers themselves being aware of their functions.

“Intermediation work”, as Rioja assured this newspaper, which includes the control of irregularities detected in the Basque Employment offices and that disappear without any type of traceability or explanation.

Vice -

Lehendakari

Idoia Mendia

assured last Wednesday the 8th at the Ercilla hotel in

Bilbao

that she was unaware of the origin of the investigation carried out by the National Police that has made it possible to put an end to a million-dollar fraud in Basque social aid committed by a 41-year-old Senegalese citizen, resident for seasons in

Vizcaya

and that it had 22 collaborators.

All of them are free and awaiting trial and neither the Court of Instruction nor the Prosecutor's Office have clarified the measures imposed to prevent ON's escape.

Mendia -one day after EL MUNDO revealed the result of the work of the Immigration Brigade- should have known that the "liaison" of the Ertzaintza with Lanbide ordered Lanbide technicians in mid-December to go to a police station after detecting three false passports used by ON

Rioja sent the response, according to judicial sources, from his email address in Lanbide, despite the fact that the commissioner is not a worker of this agency dependent on the Department of Employment.

The false passports detected became the tip of the iceberg of a huge fraud that began in 2008 and in which ON managed to create 62 different identities to obtain nearly 900 euros, by adding the Income Guarantee Income (RGI) as the Complementary Housing Benefit (PCV) that is granted for sublet rooms.

The Ertzaintza commissioner was the head of the

Álava Criminal Investigation Unit

and high command in the police station and the

Álava Territorial Headquarters

.

Despite his resume in direct appointment positions, the criterion he imposed in internal communications - with the knowledge of the general director

Gloria Múgica

- was that the workers had to assume the signature of the complaint of allegedly criminal acts that had put him in knowledge.

Rioja assumed in 2019 the position of "liaison" that had been held since 2014 by the also commissioner

Juan José Lacunza.

The existence and functions of this police "liaison" are unknown to most of Lanbide's 1,000 workers.

Its existence dates back to September 2014 when an "action protocol" was established between the Ertzaintza and the Basque Employment Service with the aim of "reducing the Ertzaintza's response times to possible criminal acts in the Employment Service offices ".

The police "liaison", first Lacunza and now Rioja, continued to depend on the Ertzaintza, but with an office in the central services of Lanbide in

Vitoria.

There is no public document that clarifies why Lacunza was designated as "liaison" or how the election of his successor was carried out.

Since the beginning of January 2021, the Lanbide management had been aware of these facts without taking the lead in the investigation either.

Only when the data obtained by the Lanbide workers reached the National Police was their own investigation activated.

The Immigration group began its work in mid-February (Mendia said it had been 10 years) and in just one month deactivated this millionaire fraud in Basque social aid with the arrest on March 21 of ON The investigation by the Immigration Brigade of the National Police continued for several more weeks and resulted in 23 detainees and the seizure of 22 forged passports, 16 bank books in the name of false identities, 17 credit cards, nine mobile phones, an external hard drive and various documents related to Lanbid.

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  • Ertzaintza

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