The Anti -Corruption Prosecutor investigates contracts exceeding two million euros awarded in the Diputación de Alicante by Carlos Mazón and his successor, Toni Pérez, to an entrepreneur of the communication sector friend of the president of the Valencian Community. The Public Ministry, as Eldiario.es has learned, has opened criminal investigation proceedings and has summoned to declare the complainant, the spokesman for Compromís in the Diputación, Ximo Perles. The complaint, to which this newspaper has had access, considers that the alleged crimes of fraud in public procurement, documentary falsehood, embezzlement of public funds and prevarication could have been committed.
These are two contracts for a sum of more than two million euros for the planning, negotiation and purchase of spaces and insertion of advertising in the media for the dissemination of institutional advertising campaigns of the Diputación de Alicante. Both awards fell to a Temporary Union of Companies (UTE) formed by the Communication and Advertising Agencies Good Lady Mr. Gorky SL and Idex Ideas and Expansi Generalitat Valenciana (one of them for the advertising campaign on the response to the catastrophic Dana on October 29).
A spokeswoman for the Diputación de Alicante, to questions from this newspaper, has expressed the “total respect” of the provincial institution to the “work of the Prosecutor’s Office.” “The Diputación is available to collaborate in whatever necessary,” according to the same source. Presidency of the Generalitat Valenciana has not made any comments. For his part, Miguel Quintanilla affirms that he has no “knowledge” about the complaint and summons comments when he is notified and knows the content.
Carlos Mazón and the businessman participated regularly in a monthly dinner of friends – a lucky private gastronomic appointment formed by politicians, businessmen and journalists – in a restaurant in Mutxamel (Alicante). Quintanilla even celebrated the investiture of Mazón as president of the Generalitat, accompanied, among others, by Santiago Lumbreras, current regional secretary of institutional relations and transparency and one of the high positions closest to the popular leader.
Compromís’s complaint ensures that the UTE of which Quintanilla was supposedly “contributed a false economic offer” to the bidding process and that, from the Diputación de Alicante, it would have “machined with the intention of manipulating the hiring processes to award different contracts to a particular mercantile, thus avoiding the principles provided for in the Public Sector Contract Law ”.
From the analysis that the Valencian coalition has made of the hiring file, “it clearly detaches how the UTE, in consideration to the award, inserts institutional advertising to media related to the Popular Party, to mediately benefit” the formation led by Carlos Mazón.
The complaint considers that the alleged crimes of fraud in public procurement would have been committed, “by manipulating hiring processes to award the contract irregularly and benefit political and economic interests”; of documentary falsehood, “by presenting false and not verifiable documentation on discounts on media rates”; of embezzlement of public funds, “given that a contract was awarded to a mercantile that, by means the manipulation of the adjudication process ”.
The contracts of the contracts established that the company finally awarded would be the one that presented the best discount on the official rates of each media (it was the key criterion that the most score gave, 70%).
“There is no record that these discounts were negotiated or accepted by the media,” says the complaint. In fact, he adds, “some of these media have flatly denied having offered such discounts, which was found by emails sent by the Compromís political group, which show that these discounts are false.”
The complaint ensures that the UTE of IDEX Ideas and Expansion SL and Good Luck Mr. Gorky SL “included information not verifiable and potentially falsified in its offer.” “The specifications allow the winner to negotiate directly with the media without adequate control, which opens the door to possible overpricing in advertising campaigns and favor treatment of certain media,” he adds.
An “arbitrary” award, according to the complaint
Compromís provides a “recent” email sent by a person in charge of one of the UTE companies that requests the media. The mail, reproduced in the complaint, indicates: “For the campaigns of Diputación de Alicante we need to send us and signed the current advertising rates. (…) They must be the rates that the medium applies in the advertising market to all advertisers. Therefore, it is important that, together with the signed and sealed rates, a letter in which it is indicated that are the general advertising rates that the medium applies in the advertising market are included and that they also apply to the Diputación de Alicante. It is important that this application of rates is clear in all advertisers. ”
The head of the winner adds: “In addition, in that document, it is necessary that a commitment that the medium acquires, for which she undertakes to communicate any change that occurs in these rates is included.” And the email ends: “These rates must be public, that is, they must be published by the medium on their website or similar as indicated by the specifications that the Diputación de Alicante published, a necessary issue for the inclusion of the media in the Media plan ”.
The complaint detects assumptions “vices” in the specifications and in the offers and argues that the award would be “arbitrary.” Compromís also analyzed the execution of the award, which “a clear tendency to prefer progressive “or” greater neutrality or ideological diversity. ”
“Serious doubts” about the execution of the contract
After the analysis of the contract execution, the complaint alludes to media that “apply disproportionately high discounts on their official rates” and raises “serious doubts” about the “veracity” of the gross rates presented, with the “possibility of inflation of initial rates in order to offer inflated discounts and, in this way, disappoint the administration. ”
The first of the contracts was awarded by the presidency of the Diputación de Alicante in 2020, during the mandate of Mazón at the head of the provincial institution. In 2024, with the popular Toni Pérez of President of the Diputación, the same UTE obtained the second advertising contract. The contracting body of both tenders, by open procedure, was the presidency of the Diputación de Alicante, with the delegation of the competition at the Governing Board and with a contracting table, in the case of the first contract, of permanent assistance to the president of The Diputación, at that time Carlos Mazón.
For the assessment of the automatic or quantifiable award criteria through formulas, it had the “technical advice” of the Department of the Presidency Area of the Provincial Institution, which issued a report on January 29, 2021. The second contract was approved in 2024 by the Governing Board and formalized by the Provincial Contracting Deputy, Juan de Dios Navarro, in the delegation of powers conferred by the President, Toni Pérez.
The complaint was recorded on October 25, almost two months before this newspaper revealed that Mazón had awarded a minor contract, by finger, the businessman Miguel Quintanilla for the institutional campaign of the DANA. Quintanilla has shared dinners of friends with the Chief of the Consell, as can be seen from numerous photographs hanging on social networks.
One of those photographs, in which Miguel Quintanilla appears next to the Chief of the Consell and the senior Santiago Lumbreras, among others, in a celebration two days after the investiture of Mazón, was exhibited in a control session of the Corts Valencianes by The socialist spokesman, José Muñoz.
Source: www.eldiario.es
