Carlos Segovia

Updated Tuesday, February 27, 2024-01:35

Misusing European funds when Spain is one of the main beneficiaries causes incalculable damage to the partners, not only reputationally, but also complicates any future negotiations to obtain aid from Brussels.

This is one of the evils caused by plots such as the one piloted by the Ministry of Transportation itself,

Koldo García

, the chief advisor to the minister at the time,

José Luis Ábalos

.

Most of the awards from public institutions to the company linked to Koldo García's commissions were designed to be paid by European funds, as this newspaper has been able to verify in the official supplement of awards of the European Union.

With translation even into the languages ​​of the 27 member states, up to seven awards appear to Soluciones de Gestión y Apoyo a Empresas SL, which is the company from which Koldo García and

Víctor de Aldama

later benefited , two commission agents close to the then minister.

The presence of European money is not the majority in absolute figures but it is in the number of contracts.

Enough to lead the European Prosecutor's Office (Eppo) to intervene, adding embarrassment to the case.

The four awards made by the company to the Canarian Health Service for medical supplies in the pandemic, worth 12.2 million, are finally listed as being endorsed to the financing of the Feder fund.

The European bulletin makes it clear that it was an "award of a contract without prior publication of a call for tender", which is only admissible due to "

the situation of extreme urgency resulting from events unforeseeable for the contracting authority

and with in accordance with the strict conditions established in the Directive.

The explanation given to the EU by the regional government chaired by the current Minister of Territorial Policy,

Ángel Víctor Torres

, was "the Covid-19 emergency."

This type of direct awards without alternative offers proliferated in the EU in those weeks of anguish, but what the managers of the Feder fund did not know is that in the backroom as a commission agent and at the expense of the community taxpayer was none other than the royal chief of staff of a minister of the fourth euro economy.

Also two contracts from the Health Service of the Balearic Islands, dependent on the then Government of the current president of the Congress of Deputies,

Francina Armengol

, were formulated to be charged to the Feder fund.

Above all, the main one worth 3.7 million euros which, to greater European derision, was to buy masks that have been left in a warehouse because they were unusable.

The second Balearic contract, worth 46,872 euros, is officially for a payment service for customs procedures that could involve an extra commission to Management Solutions paid by European funds, although it is not clear that it was finally executed.

Finally, the contract of 12.5 million euros to acquire five million masks for the state company Adif was also drafted to pass the bill to the Feder fund and this is stated in the EU bulletin.

However,

Adif sources assure that, in the end, the purchase of this material was not financed by European funds

.

For its part, the largest award, that of State Ports to Management Solutions worth 20 million euros, was not designed to endorse the payment to the EU, but it is key for others in which there was already European money.

It opened the doors of the Administration to a company that, as the Court of Auditors points out, did not demonstrate solvency or experience in the sector.

As for the Ministry of the Interior, it did not endorse its request to Feder either.

Ciudadanos MEPs have written to EPPO's chief prosecutor,

Laura Kövesi

, to investigate all of this.

We will see, but what is no longer presumed, but unfortunately firm, is the embarrassment before the EU.