The President of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla, has announced this Friday the resignation of the Minister of Public Works, José Luis Gochicoa, as a result of the case of corruption in road maintenance contracts for which, on February 22, the headquarters were registered of the council and for which a senior official of that department remains in provisional prison. Revilla regretted having to “accept the resignation” of Gochicoa, one of his closest collaborators, whom he has defended as an “honorable man” and whom he has described as the “best man” of his government . “There are more investigations and, if necessary, I will not pass one, I have never done it,” said the Cantabrian president.
In his appearance, Revilla has proclaimed that he “puts both hands in the fire” for Gochicoa, of whom he has said that he is “absolutely clean” and “has had absolutely nothing to do” in the alleged plot. However, the regional president and leader of the Regionalist Party of Cantabria (PRC) has acknowledged that “the checks” on the jailed official “have failed” and, therefore, he has no choice but to accept the resignation of his adviser, knowing that he is committing “an injustice”. As can be seen from the summary investigating the plot, he added, the detained senior official “did not have any accomplices” within the autonomous Administration.
The Cantabrian president has defended that “no politician or position of trust appears” in any of the 4,080 pages that the summary consists of, but he justifies the departure of the counselor and the general director in that his party, the PRC, “has the very high ethical bar. Revilla, who presides over Cantabria in coalition with the PSOE, has announced that he has asked the court to be able to separate the companies allegedly involved from the nine files that are being investigated in the case, all of them processed during the year 2022 and that the head of jailed service.
The announcement of the resignation of the Minister of Public Works occurs at a time of high concern within the bipartisan PRC-PSOE due to the negative effect that this plot may have on the electoral expectations of both formations, less than three months away for the May elections. In this sense, the vice president of Cantabria and general secretary of the Cantabrian PSOE, Pablo Zuloaga (PSOE), has affirmed that Revilla “is right” with the departure of the counselor, so that the activity of the regional government “is not harmed”. From the PP, its regional president, María José Sáenz de Buruaga, criticizes that the counselor’s resignation comes “late, badly and dragging” and makes Revilla ugly that it took 10 days to make the decision.
Manuel Domingo del Jesús, director of Public Works of the ministry, has also submitted his resignation. Revilla explained that the replacement of the two positions will take place next week, after Gochicoa himself appears in the Cantabrian Parliament to give his version of the allegedly irregular actions in the department that he has directed for several years.
The outbreak of the case
What affects the most is what happens closer. To not miss anything, subscribe.
subscribe
On Wednesday of last week, agents of the National Police and the Tax Agency carried out an operation in which eight people were arrested —six in Cantabria and two in Madrid. The actions investigated the alleged irregular awarding of road maintenance and conservation contracts in the Ministry of Public Works and Territorial Planning of the Government of Cantabria. The resigned counselor is the political person responsible for the alleged ringleader of the plot, Miguel Ángel Díez, head of the Autonomous Highway service who has been in preventive detention and without bail since last Friday.
The investigation began in the first months of 2022, when officials of the Tax Agency in Cantabria learned that Díez was allegedly participating in the manipulation of public works contracts. Through the issuance of technical reports and his participation in the contracting tables, the head of the Autonomous Highway Service managed that the companies La Encina, Cannor, Rucecan and Api Movilidad were awarded several conservation and maintenance contracts for the regional road network.
According to the investigations, in exchange for the fraudulent awards, the official obtained bribes that he channeled through a family network in which his wife and two daughters were involved. Through a family company, Parivara Lagani, whose sole administrator is his wife and in which the two daughters of the couple appear as partners, the main defendant entered more than 500,000 euros from the companies involved between 2020 and 2022. The amount was justified by making photocopies, although the police have verified that there has been no type of expense associated with said activity: neither the purchase of machinery to make the copies, nor rent, personnel expenses, supplies or telephony.
To this money that the companies would have entered into the family society, the investigators add the 530,000 euros found in a safe at the family home and a Volvo XC40 whose renting was carried out by the company Api Mobility. The Santander judge handling the case estimates the funds illegally obtained by the family of the Cantabrian Highway chief between 2019 and 2022 at 1.3 million euros.
Unjustified capital increase
The Tax Agency was able to determine that the official’s family had experienced a significant unjustified increase in assets between 2013 and 2022. Only during the past year, the investigators detected entries for an amount of 2.8 million euros in the official’s checking accounts. During the search at his home, 530,000 euros were detected in a safe hidden in a wall and a machine to count money. The police seized abundant documentation that has been incorporated into a summary that contains more than 4,000 pages. Bank accounts and financial assets amounting to several million euros have been blocked.
Díez allegedly intervened in the preparation of offers from specific bidders, issuing an arbitrary assessment of the offers and expelling other potential bidders. To do this, according to the investigation, he modified prices, negotiated the terms of the tenders with concerted companies and used privileged information.
The operation exploded on Wednesday of last week with the arrest of all those investigated, while entries and searches were carried out at the home of the principal investigated and his office at the Ministry of Public Works, as well as at the corporate domiciles of the companies. awarded the contracts and the homes of the administrators of these companies, all of them in Cantabria.
#Minister #Public #Works #Cantabria #resigns #case #irregularities #highway #contracts