It is unusual for the president of the Junta of Andalusia to respond, before microphones and cameras, for the case being investigated by a judge in Seville and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office for a possible crime of prevarication in the emergency contracts with private clinics that his Government signed between 2020 and 2024.
He did so this pre-Christmas Saturday, in a mandatory appearance with the vice president and Minister of Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, at the San Telmo Palace, where he referred to the judicial case as “a political complaint by the PSOE”, the party who filed the complaint and for which the current manager of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), Valle García, and her two predecessors in office, Miguel Ángel Guzmán and Diego Vargas, are currently charged.
“Regarding the political complaint made by the psoe on the issue of the SAS, well, there are none of the former councilors charged, they do not exist,” said Moreno, when asked if he was worried that the judge would end up charging the two former health councilors who They were in office when those contracts were signed and awarded by hand, without publicity or competition, to private clinics.
The president of the Board has dodged the question, although sources from the regional Executive admit that this “concern” exists and leave the door open to appear as an affected party in the case. In this way, they warn, they would prevent the PSOE as a private prosecution from managing the times and information that affects senior officials and former officials of the Board, in order to be able to defend themselves from what they consider “a strategy of spreading mud.”
The concern among the president’s entourage is due to the fact that the two former Health Ministers targeted by the PSOE in its complaint, without mentioning them – “very high levels of the Government Council,” says the complaint – are still active and occupy relevant positions.
Jesús Aguirre was Minister of Health between January 2019 and the end of Moreno’s first term, in July 2022. He is currently the president of the Andalusian Parliament. Under his mandate, the former SAS manager, Miguel Ángel Guzmán, authorized Emergency File 110, initially endowed with 70 million euros, but which was extended three times, expanding its budget to 243 million euros based on addendums that arrived. until summer 2023.
This file is the epicenter of the judicial investigation of contracts with private clinics, which the SAS inflated based on extension resolutions based on the legal framework that the central government enabled during the worst of the pandemic when it was already repealed.
Aguirre is succeeded, already in the current legislature, by former Health Minister Catalina García, who promotes Guzmán and appoints him number two in her department, until she leaves in December 2022 and, three months later, signs for one of the companies. private health companies to which he had awarded, by hand, contracts worth 44 million euros. The Board aborted that signing when it became public.
Catalina García was still in office on March 12, 2023, when elDiario.es revealed the handout awarding of 243 million to private clinics without legal coverage, and saw how 48 hours later the spokesperson for the Board announced the cancellation of these health care contracts. emergency. Last July, Moreno dismissed her as Health Minister in the profound remodeling he carried out of his Government, but kept García in the cabinet, now as head of the Environment.
If the judge investigating the contracts – or the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office – choose to summon the former councilors to testify in the case, they would have to request the request from the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA), given their status as certified. In the case of Aguirre, it would be the first time in history that a president of the Andalusian Parliament is subjected to a situation like this.
The PSOE, in the successive extensions of its complaint, has pointed out to the magistrate and the prosecutor the path that leads to the criminal responsibility of the Government Council, but does not directly cite either of the two former councilors. At the moment, he has only pointed out the last three SAS managers – already charged – and the seven provincial SAS officials who authorized these joint contracts with private clinics.
The scenario of a possible accusation of the president of Parliament and a member of Moreno’s cabinet would further complicate the story of the PP, which at the national level is demanding the resignation of the leaders of Pedro Sánchez’s Executive accused in different open judicial cases, with special emphasis on the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz.
However, President Moreno has appeared this Saturday apparently unconcerned about the ongoing judicial investigation. “We fully trust in justice, if a political party decides to make a complaint, it is completely within its rights to do so and it will be the judges who will clarify if there is an anomalous situation. It doesn’t seem like it to us, but in any case, we will see it as time goes by,” he said.
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