Madrid politics is once again facing a corruption case at the forefront. One of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s closest collaborators in the regional PP and vice-president of the Madrid Assembly, Ana Millán, is being investigated for prevarication, bribery, influence peddling and fraud against the public administration for her actions as a councillor in Arroyomolinos, a town in the south-east of Madrid with more than 30,000 inhabitants.
Millán became a defendant more than two years ago, but it is now that the High Court of Justice of Madrid will take charge of the case. The head of the Navalcarnero court that has been investigating the events for four years has had to recuse herself in favour of the TSJM because Isabel Díaz Ayuso rose to number 8 in last year’s elections and, as was foreseeable, was elected as a regional deputy, automatically becoming a protected representative.
Ayuso and the Madrid PP have always played down the judicial indictment of Ana Millán, despite the solidity of the evidence gathered by the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard. The news of the inhibition of the Investigative Court number 6 of Valdemoro in favor of the TSJM forced Génova to speak out. The national spokesperson, Borja Sémper, used the expression “administrative indictment” to refer to Millán’s situation. The four crimes of corruption that the Navalcarnero judge attributes to her are all included in the Penal Code and imply several years in prison.
These accusations are as familiar in the field of corruption as the facts that gave rise to them. In short: Ana Millán, when she was a youth councillor in Arroyomolinos, awarded contracts worth close to 400,000 euros to a businessman who paid her 500 euros more than the market price each month for the rental of a penthouse in the centre of Arroyomolinos. In addition, the same businessman hired and paid the councillor’s sister and her husband. The possible influence of Millán on other contracts awarded to Francisco Vicente Roselló by the Department of Culture, another 257,000 euros, is also being investigated.
The corruption plot is so recurrent that its origin is in one of the most representative cases sponsored by the PP in Madrid and which still survives in the National Court: the Púnica case. In 2016, three years after that case began, the government that succeeded the PP in Arroyomolinos discovered members of the outgoing government trying to get rid of three bags of rubbish. Inside they found emails and bank statements that showed the relationship between a businessman, Francisco Vicente Roselló, owner of the company Neverland, with which he had been responsible for Youth, and therefore for the town’s festivities, and Ana Millán.
At that time, the main concern of the new municipal team was not the notes on Roselló but those that linked the former councillor for Youth with another businessman, José Luis Huerta Valbuena, owner of Waiter Music and already known for being the protagonist of one of the separate parts of the Púnica case. The Government team, with Ciudadanos at the head, went to the National Court. It was the germ of the ‘Millán case’.
Púnica Case-Millán Case
Buried beneath the mountain of documents in the Púnica case – 11 pieces and a decade of investigation to date – were the clues about Roselló and Millán. Finally, in 2020, Judge Manuel García Castellón responded to a request from the Prosecutor’s Office to recuse himself in favour of a local court. The magistrate found it “particularly peculiar that there were meals or direct meetings between the responsible councillor, Ana Millán, and the future contractor, José Luis Huerta Valbuena”. “Such facts lead to the presumption, at least with the necessary force that justifies the criminal investigation, of evidence of a possible continued crime of administrative prevarication”, he added.
Indeed, the judge was pointing to the relationship between the former councillor, who was then mayor, and the owner of Waiter Music. But those facts were already prescribed and that alleged corruption of Ana Millán could not be investigated. But what about the other businessman, Francisco Roselló? García Castellón’s ruling contained another statement that, over time, led to the indictment of Ayuso’s collaborator. “A different issue – wrote the judge – arises in relation to the facts concerning councillor Ana Millán and her relationship with the company Neverland [Francisco Roselló] “While they offer clues that are not related to the present case, the competent investigating court would be disqualified,” the judge noted. The ‘Millán case’ was born.
After four years of investigation in Navalcarnero, the order of inhibition of the judge Lidia Prada, dated last June 13, describes how the participation of Ana Millán is far from being related to an administrative irregularity. Two months earlier, the magistrate had received a final report from the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard, 291 pages in which they exposed to the magistrate Prada all the evidence collected in four years. According to the agents of the elite unit, Millán approved the specifications, requested extensions and modifications of files, issued a document “proposing the companies to invite to the tender” and gave her approval to the invoices in favor of the businessman Roselló, now also investigated by the TSJM.
In her writing, the magistrate from Navalcarnero highlights a passage from the statement of an official from the Youth Councillor’s Office headed by Ana Millán, who before the judge highlighted “the difference in treatment given by the former councillor in the contracting and in the way of interacting with Grupo Educativo, which would have been different from that with the rest of the companies that were awarded the contract by her Office”.
On the other hand, Millán received payments from a company of Roselló, Neverland, “and from Francisco Roselló himself” payments for a total value of 51,104.67 euros. A former employee of one of Roselló’s companies, who lived in Millán’s penthouse, told the agents that he paid 500 euros a month to his then boss in cash. Roselló, in turn, gave 900 euros a month to Millán. The argument of the businessman and the mayor before the judge is that if the rent was close to double the market price it is because it was a rent with the right to buy that the businessman never exercised.
On the other hand, between 2008 and 2011, Millán’s sister, a social worker, billed Roselló’s companies 88,642.42 euros and the first’s husband received 37,578.04 euros from the businessman’s conglomerate between 2008 and 2011. The Navalcarnero judge also mentions in the order of inhibition to the TSJM that the Civil Guard has discovered cash deposits of 42,650 euros by Millán herself into her bank accounts in that period, between 2008 and 2014 in this last case.
The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, knows what it is like to have bosses in the Popular Party who are under investigation by the courts. Ignacio González, Esperanza Aguirre, the manager Beltrán Gutiérrez… For a long time it was difficult to work on the first floor of the headquarters of Génova, where the PP of Madrid is located, and for that not to happen. Accustomed to working with defendants, the novelty that Ana Millán Arroyo brings is her status as subordinate to Ayuso, her number three in the regional party and vice president in the Assembly of Madrid.
Ana Millán Arroyo has spent almost half her life dedicated to professional politics. This year she turns 46 and 20 years ago she was already a councillor in her town, Arroyomolinos. Like all people who are professionally dedicated to politics, Milán has combined her position with the organic activity of the party. On the first floor of Génova, the one occupied by the PP of Madrid, she soon coincided with Ayuso. Over the years she would replace her as Communication Secretary of the regional PP when the current president was appointed candidate for the Community of Madrid in 2019.
Source: www.eldiario.es
