The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, announced this Friday in the Senate the dismissal of two senior officials of his department accused in the so-called ‘Koldo case’ and has announced that the audit he announced in February has detected irregularities in the purchase of masks during the pandemic from companies in the plot of the former advisor to former minister José Luis Ábalos.
“I have informed the Undersecretary of the Ministry of the decision that he should not continue in his position, and I have informed the President of Adif that he should proceed with the dismissal of the Director General of Human Resources of that entity. Given the legal situation, I am not making any assessments of that decision, the facts that are revealed in the audit entail a loss of confidence,” Puente justified, who has not named those two senior officials.
They are the Undersecretary of Transport, Jesús Manuel Gómez, and the Director General of Human Resources of the railway manager, Michaux Miranda, already charged by the judge of the National Court, Ismael Moreno.
Puente made this announcement in his second appearance of the day in the Upper House. The first, to talk about the problems in the railway system that all of Spain is experiencing this summer. And the next, to explain the results of the audit that his Ministry commissioned on possible cases of corruption. That is, on the Koldo García plot and the purchase of masks during the pandemic. An audit that ends with the dismissal of these two high-ranking officials and the recognition that there were irregularities.
In February, Puente announced a “very extensive” “specific” audit on the purchase of FFP2 masks ordered at the height of the pandemic by two entities in his department, Puertos del Estado, from the Koldo García network. An audit that, according to Puente, concluded last Tuesday, August 20.
“The required requirements were not met”
“I wanted to analyse the procedure for the acquisition and distribution of masks” to see if it was done in accordance with the law, he explained. And he admitted that the audit points out irregularities. “It seems clear that the required requirements were not met. Even if they had been met, the effects that are no longer known could not have been avoided,” he admitted. “There was a lack of justification for the units to be acquired. There is no rigour in the documentation. Even if the minimum requirements had been met, specifically with regard to the emergency processing, there would have been gaps in relation to the risk of fraud that explains the existence of a conflict of interest,” he concluded.
Regarding the first purchase of masks. “The order from the Ministry increased in just 38 minutes,” Puente stressed, because it went from four to eight million masks. “It does not meet the required criteria. It does not seem justifiable that the estimate should double in 38 minutes,” the minister said, citing the audit. “The eight million masks coincide with the offer” from the “Soluciones de Gestión” company.
The second aspect of that first purchase is the price. It is clear, he explained, that the price was 2.5 euros per unit, at a time when it was difficult to adjust the price to that cost. “Over time” and with the information from the Court of Auditors on COVID contracts “this price is below the average price paid”, 3.65 euros in April 2020, the head of Transport explained.
And the third aspect of the audit of this contract is the date, March 20. “It is understandable” that given the exceptional nature of the situation there were few actors, but the search for alternative offers and the justification of the purchase from the successful bidder had to be justified, the same as it points out with respect to the company in charge of logistics. “The goods were not delivered in the following 48 hours, but on five different dates.” The last one, in May.
Regarding this contract, Puente has stated that “there is no record of delivery of the masks to the Ministry” or to transport companies, and there is no record of delivery to the Land Transport Directorate, to the railway companies or to the autonomous communities.
And regarding the second purchase of masks, he indicated that it was made when the first ones had not yet arrived and that a new detection of needs was not carried out to determine how many to buy. In this case, there were more companies bidding, some with lower price proposals, he assured. Therefore, the audit does not consider the award to Soluciones de Gestión justified.
Looking to the future, the audit report considers it essential to identify the people who participate in the purchasing procedures. Puente has pointed out that, among the preventive measures proposed by the report, is that people who have no relationship with the administration do not intervene in this type of purchasing procedures. “Mr. Aldama is being referred to directly or indirectly,” he said in reference to the businessman and president of Zamora CF who acted as mediator.
Source: www.eldiario.es
