The multimillion-dollar contracts received by companies linked to Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s relatives will be the subject of a parliamentary investigation in Galicia despite the PP’s attempt to stop these inquiries. The BNG, the second largest party with 25 of the 75 deputies, has announced that it will promote the commission alone, making use of the only opportunity offered to it in this legislature by the regulations of the Galician Parliament, as it has a third of the total seats. “We are going to uncover what the PP wants to hide,” warned the nationalist leader, Ana Pontón, from the rostrum of the Chamber on Tuesday, after Alfonso Rueda’s Popular Party imposed its absolute majority to stop the opposition’s attempt to create this commission of inquiry by ordinary means. The PP describes the suspicions about these awards to Feijóo’s entourage as a “mud machine.”
Pontón’s party, with the support of José Ramón Gómez Besteiro’s socialists, wants the Xunta to clarify the contracts received, in many cases without competition, by two service companies that have Feijóo’s relatives as directors: the Eulen Group, in which Micaela Núñez Feijóo is the delegate in Galicia, and by Universal Support, with Ignacio Cárdenas Botas, brother of the former Galician president’s partner, as commercial director. The first of these firms, according to an investigation by the newspaper The Jumpbenefited from 1,311 minor contracts between 2018 and 2023 for an amount of 4.8 million euros, and, according to the nationalists, from a total amount of 55 million in orders during this period. The company in which Feijóo’s brother-in-law is a director, for its part, obtained 19.2 million euros in direct contracts during the pandemic, between May 2020 and October 2021, the Bloque denounces.
The debate on whether the Galician Parliament should investigate these contracts took place with the resounding absence of the president of the Xunta. Rueda got up from his seat just when the matter was about to be addressed. “It is a declaration of transparency,” Pontón ironically said from the lectern. “Only those who have something to hide are afraid of a commission of inquiry.” The nationalist interprets the popular party’s veto of this investigation as a confession that “they are dipping into the Galicians’ wallets to benefit friendly companies.” She assures that Eulen has been favored with “deliberately divided contracts” to avoid the public tender and that “very few companies” shared the emergency contracts of Feijóo’s Xunta during the pandemic “making real profits.” Among them, Pontón points out, Universal Support, the company in which the brother of the PP leader’s partner is commercial director: it received 19 million euros in contracts awarded between May 2020 and October 2021.
The parliamentary spokesman for the PP in the Galician Chamber, Alberto Pazos, argued against creating the commission of inquiry into the contracts awarded to Feijóo’s relatives, accusing the BNG and PSOE of acting like Nicolás Maduro with the opposition in Venezuela: “The admirers of the exemplary Bolivarian electoral system intend to import the methodology of the Maduro regime conveniently adapted to the Spanish reality. Thus, faced with the scandalous accumulation of corruption cases in the closest circle of the President of the Government, the left refuses to give any explanation and at the same time demands that the leader of the opposition be investigated.” Pazos places Pontón “at the wheel of the mud machine, with Besteiro sitting as co-pilot.” “To muddy the waters is to come here to talk about Venezuela,” the nationalist replied.
The Galician socialists have joined their 9 votes on Tuesday with those of the 25 BNG deputies in favour of the Chamber investigating these contracts. “The Xunta cannot normalise that companies from Feijóo’s family circle receive preferential treatment in public contracts”, defended the former minister Elena Espinosa. The PSdeG deputy has emphasised that “the splitting of contracts is an illegality” and has warned that, although the pandemic forced “quick decisions” to be made, “urgency does not mean not complying with the rules”.
The extra cost of the Vigo hospital
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The Galician nationalists want the parliamentary investigation to not only focus on contracts affecting companies linked to Feijóo’s relatives. It will also include the awards made during the pandemic to Sibucu 360, a firm with no connection to the health sector and, according to the Bloque, linked to a businessman convicted of fraud and forgery: José Ramón García, former CEO of Blusens. It went from billing the Xunta 765,000 euros in 2019 to more than 31 million in 2020. The other firm under investigation is Mape Asesores, a Pontevedra company related to the partner of the Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The Xunta awarded it 12 contracts for more than 10.4 million between April and July 2020 and it paid overprices.
Another issue that will be the subject of a parliamentary investigation is the 470 million euro overrun that Feijóo’s model for building the Álvaro Cunqueiro hospital in Vigo represented. Only after coming to power in 2009 as a champion of austerity did the current leader of the PP opt to build the complex through a public-private partnership to prevent this investment from disrupting his deficit. According to a report by the Consello de Contas, the regional oversight body, the result of this decision is that the hospital has cost 470 million more than with the purely public formula and has 700 fewer beds.
After learning that the BNG will force the creation of the parliamentary commission, the Galician Popular Party has promised that it will give “the pertinent explanations” about these contracts. “We will show that you only contribute lies to Galician politics,” predicts Pazos. Pontón, for his part, has launched a request to Rueda’s PP: that it “not veto” the investigations and avoid using the steamroller of its absolute majority to block access to the documentation or “necessary appearances.”
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