The judge investigating alleged prevarication due to the FP scandal in the Community of Madrid has expanded her investigation focus. Until now, the 39th investigating court of Madrid was studying whether the Ciudad Escolar Vocational Training center had carried out works outside the law, cutting up the reforms so as not to have to put them out to tender and to be able to award them by hand for a value of two million euros.
The case had been subject to an extension in September of last year. Now, in a new order, the judge calls seven directors of both institutes to testify as witnesses, some of whom also carried out works in the period investigated, between 2021 and 2023, during the first government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Some of these cases, such as that of the IES Alberto Corazón (known as the Alcalá School of Art), were revealed by elDiario.es, which demonstrated with an investigation that gave rise to the judicial case, that it had also carried out works outside the law.
In addition to the person in charge of this center in the Community of Madrid, the instructor cites those responsible for the “IES Antonio Machado, Professional Conservatory of Music of Alcalá de Henares, IES Príncipe Felipe, IES Virgen de la Paloma, IES Ciudad de los Poetas and IES Tetúan de las Victorias” and does so “in accordance with the request of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office”, which in a previous writing had already revealed what it considered a “rude and glaring” omission of the public works bidding procedure.
In the case of the Antonio Machado and the Alcalá Conservatory, both centers paid for part of those works by lES Alberto Corazón, which had cost 1.2 million euros. As the builder who reported the facts and gave rise to the case said, the payments were split, but instructions were also given to pay from different institutions so that the alarms did not go off.
In this new order, the court also calls for José María Rodríguez Jiménez, former director general of Secondary Education and Vocational Training of the previous Ayuso government, to be declared under investigation, who came in July to testify as a witness and who is now being investigated.
Works without public competition
According to the public sector contract law, works whose value is greater than 40,000 euros plus VAT must be put out to tender, the procedure that gives guarantees to the taxpayer that there is competition and in which the best offer can be chosen. As elDiario.es demonstrated in its investigation, in many of these cases they were hired out to construction companies and divided up (on the one hand the walls, on the other the bathrooms, on the other the paint…) so that the Intervention alarms did not go off. It also happened in institutes that have not been mentioned by the instructor, such as the Ignacio Ellacuría Distance Training Institute. In order to pay it without raising suspicions, Education paid the money to an institute in Móstoles, which was ordered to pay for those works in Alcorcón.
The main defendant, former deputy director of FP who was dismissed when the scandal broke, said in his statement before the court that the Minister of Education (then, Enrique Ossorio, today president of the Assembly of the Community of Madrid) was aware and that the procedure was like this when he arrived and when he left. He also declared that everything was happening under the eyes and approval of the Territorial Area Directorate, since the institute directors do not have the capacity to decide on the works or manage the budgets, which are given and audited by the Ministry. During the period now investigated, Ossorio’s right-hand woman was Rocío Albert, today Treasury advisor to Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
It was the businessman himself who built the expansion of Ciudad Escolar who raised the alarm when he saw that he was not paid. He began to complain to the institute directors and, as the months passed and he had to suspend payments, he began to send burofaxes to the General Directorate, to the department of the current Minister of Education, Emilio Viciana, and even met with an advisor to the president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who promised him that they would fix the situation. He defends that he always followed the procedures that he was told, as stated in some emails to which elDiario.es has had access.
What has the Ministry of Education done?
After receiving the burofax with the payment claim, and verifying that this contract did not officially exist in any department, an investigation was opened into the Ciudad Escolar case and an inspector interviewed officials and the businessman. At the end of his investigation, he recommended that the case be placed in the hands of justice, in view of the seriousness of the facts and the possibility that a crime had been committed, according to the letter sent to the Prosecutor’s Office. Education kept the case hidden until elDiario.es published it. A complaint from Podemos to the court brought down the investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office, which transferred the entire case to the investigative court. The Community of Madrid itself, the PSOE, Más Madrid and the CCOO union are involved in the case.
Source: www.eldiario.es
