The judge investigating the emergency contracts of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) with private clinics between 2020 and 2023, based on a law repealed after the pandemic, has cited the current manager, Valle García, and her two predecessors as being investigated. the position, Diego Vargas and Miguel Ángel Guzmán.
In a car, advanced by Cadena Ser and to which elDiario.es Andalucía has had access, the investigating judge number 13 of Seville, Javier Santamaría, has informed the three that they are going to be investigated in a judicial case on a possible crime of prevarication, as a result of a complaint filed by the PSOE that denounces three more crimes: embezzlement of funds, falsification of documents and membership in a criminal organization, the latter punishable by up to eight years in prison.
The judicial case now underway reproduces, point by point, the investigation initiated more than a year ago by this newspaper on the contracts awarded by the Board to private clinics under the exceptional legal framework of the pandemic when it was already repealed.
elDiario.es Andalucía revealed, on March 12, 2023, that the Moreno Government had awarded 243 million euros to these companies without legal protection, news that caused a written notice of SAS Intervention 48 hours later. that opened an internal investigation, and the announcement by the Board to immediately suspend these types of contracts.
The socialists’ complaint directly points to two former senior officials of the Andalusian Government, Miguel Ángel Guzmán, manager of the SAS between November 2019 and July 2022; and his replacement, Diego Vargas, who held this position until December 2023. Guzmán was promoted to Deputy Minister of Health after the 2022 elections, but was dismissed five months later, after the exorbitant waiting lists of patients for surgery became public, which the Junta had not published for a year and a half.
Three months after his dismissal, Guzmán signed for the private insurer Asisa, a company that had benefited from the hand-picked awarding of 44 million euros in contracts that are now being investigated by Justice. His replacement as manager of the SAS was Diego Vargas, also accused, who was dismissed along with him in December 2023.
The Board then signed the current manager, Valle García, who as soon as she arrived put aside the Framework Agreements with which they intended to return to open contracting, with advertising and competitive competition, and recovered the award by hand with private clinics, this time with the formula of negotiation without advertising, with which it has distributed more than 120 million this year, 80% to the same six private hospital complexes that monopolized the contracts by hand between 2021 and 2023 that the judge investigates.
Three days of writing
The PSOE also questions the use of contracts negotiated without publicity but, without yet expanding the complaint to these new hand-picked awards, on November 11 it included in its complaint the name of the current manager of the SAS, who a day later (12 November) already appears as being investigated in the order issued by Judge Santamaría. The magistrate summons the defendants “for any business day this month of November in order to inform them of their rights and inform them of the complaint,” although he does not set the day of their statement in court.
In the last statement, dated November 13, Santamaría has requested documentation from the Court of Accounts, the General Intervention of the Junta de Andalucía and also from the SAS, at the request of the delegated prosecutors of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which on November 11 They sent their brief requesting the carrying out of various investigative procedures, which the court undertakes to determine the facts under investigation.
The judge demands from the Andalusian Government the file approved by the Government Council on October 6, 2020, in which they replace the prior inspection of certain expenses, organs and health services – including the controversial emergency contracts – with permanent financial control, that is, post-hoc audits.
One of these audits of the SAS Intervention, referring to the 2021 financial year, questions the emergency procedure when the pandemic was already “very tempered”, concludes that “there is no justification” for maintaining contracts by hand, and calls into question the discretionary distribution of almost 300 million euros between private clinics.
Multiple documentation requests
In the same order, the judge also requires the successive reports of the SAS Intervention for the year 2021 and later – the one for the year 2022 must be made public on these dates -, he requires reports from the Secretariat of the State Public Procurement Advisory Board, resolutions and consultations relating to post-2020 emergency procurement.
This body, attached to the Ministry of Finance, already urged all autonomous communities in April 2021 to restrict the use of emergency contracts. The Andalusian Ministry of Finance, a month later, sent instructions to the rest of the departments, including the SAS, to remind them that the Royal Decree enabled by the Government during the pandemic to expedite contract hiring was already “fully repealed”, and should its use should be limited to “exceptional and residual” cases.
The magistrate also requests from the Chamber of Accounts its audit report on the emergency contracts in the Junta de Andalucía relating to 2020, that is, prior to the judicial investigation, but which already points out in an annex on 2021 the abuse of these awards. hitchhiking to private clinics.
The judge gives notice of his order, in which he cites the last three SAS officials as being investigated, to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which is already part of the case and will have to position itself regarding the crimes and defendants indicated by the PSOE.
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