The entry of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in the open investigation against the Andalusian Government for a possible crime of prevarication in the abuse of emergency contracts – by hand, without advertising or competitive competition – up to three years after the Covid-19 pandemic has stressed the Executive of Juan Manuel Moreno to the maximum.
The Andalusian PP did not expect the PSOE to formalize the complaint that it had been announcing for almost a year, it did not expect a judge to open proceedings and much less did it expect the Public Ministry to hand this case over to Anti-Corruption, instead of the ordinary Prosecutor’s Office. All of this has happened in the last month, without the Moreno Government still knowing what is being investigated or who is being investigated, and therefore how to defend itself. The level of nervousness this Wednesday at the San Telmo Palace was palpable.
The Board has not received the complaint presented by the socialists before the Court of Instruction number 13 of Seville on June 20, because there alleged criminal acts are revealed and documented – among them embezzlement of public funds and prevarication – that imply to the Andalusian Administration.
To know the exact terms of the complaint, Moreno’s Executive would have to recant, that is, he would have to admit a certain seriousness and concern about a judicial case that, until now, he has undervalued, and appear as an injured party. This reluctance to take this step is similar to that of the previous Socialist Government, which also took a long time to appear in the ERE judicial case, while the PP, as a private prosecutor, controlled all the information of the investigations as it progressed.
The feeling of confusion that gripped the Andalusian president’s entourage this Wednesday is very similar, above all, because the judicial case today has more documentation than a month ago and covers a longer period. Since Judge Francisco Javier Santamaría accepted Juan Espadas’ PSOE complaint for processing and opened proceedings for an alleged crime of administrative prevarication, on October 3, the socialists have expanded the original complaint and filed a complaint at the same time as They appeared as a popular accusation.
The expansion of the complaint against the Moreno Government, which the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office is now going to investigate, already covers four years of an alleged “parallel system” of hand-contracts with private healthcare: 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
A complaint and a complaint
The socialists have deposited in the courts what they had been denouncing for months in the Andalusian Parliament, namely: that the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) extended the emergency contracting (by hand) with private clinics for two and a half years, taking advantage of the framework exceptional legal provision enabled by the central government in the worst of the pandemic, when it was already repealed.
A system that starts in 2020, but that the Board extends through extensions and spending addenda until May 2023, tripling the initial budget that it awarded to private clinics to empty the swollen waiting lists of patients for surgery.
In between, two key dates occur: in May 2021, the central government repeals the Royal Decree that prioritized emergency contracting to respond to Covid, and a month later, in April, the Ministry of Finance sends a written instruction to all departments of the Andalusian Government – including the SAS – urging them to stop using this procedure that was already “fully repealed” and, therefore, should have a “residual” use.
Despite the written warning and the repealed regulations, the Ministry of Health continued for two more years extending these contracts by hand, stretching an initial file that was born with 70 million budgets – to refer patients to private clinics – and ended up above of the 243 million euros.
This turning a deaf ear to the law, to the guidelines of the State Contracting Board and the Ministry of Finance itself is what has pushed the PSOE to put the crime of prevarication at the epicenter of its complaint. It is the criminal indication that the judge in the case has assumed, regardless of whether the investigations lead him to investigate other criminal indications reported by the PSOE, such as embezzlement of funds.
This newspaper revealed that the SAS had been awarding million-dollar contracts to private clinics for two years, using the legal framework of the pandemic that had already expired, and against the criteria of the Treasury. elDiario.es published the original file, of 70 million, and the four resolutions of extensions and continuous addendums to the initial budget that ended up tripling two years later. That information was published on the night of Sunday, March 12, 2023.
In the following 48 hours, two relevant events occurred: one, the SAS Central Intervention warns the management team in writing that it has detected serious irregularities in emergency contracting in the 2021 financial year; and two, the Junta de Andalucía suddenly announces the suspension of this type of contracts.
The news, the Intervention notice and the stoppage of contracts
On Monday, March 13, 2023, this newspaper published a continuation of the exclusive that it had launched the day before: The Andalusian Government’s contracts with private clinics reach June 2023 with an expenditure of 243 million. The initial budget of that file was 70 million euros in hand-picked awards, but Health extended those contracts four times for almost two years, with successive spending addenda, until reaching 243 million in the summer of 2023.
The SAS then recognized that it had authorized two new extension resolutions at the end of 2022, extending emergency contracting with private healthcare for two and a half years until that time.
24 hours later, on Tuesday, March 14, the spokesperson for the Andalusian Government, Ramón Fernández Pacheco, announced the cancellation of the emergency contracts and assured that the SAS would return to ordinary contracting, with advertising and attendance, as of June 30. 2023, when the last extension of the hand-picked contracts expired. “The objective is that they do not continue to be extended” [los contratos de emergencia]confirmed Fernández Pacheco, to questions from journalists after the Government Council.
That same Tuesday, March 14, the SAS auditor sent in writing to the managing directorate “a notification prior to the issuance of the provisional report” about the contract contracts during the 2021 financial year. This writing is a prior warning to the SAS of that you will receive an unfavorable report, which includes non-compliance with regulations or “specially relevant qualifications”. It is like a warning signal, which is regulated in section Eighteen of the Resolution of October 27, 2021, of the General Intervention of the Junta de Andalucía.
From there, the SAS is on notice about the Intervention’s objections, which finally reach it in the provisional report on the 2021 contract contracts, and which is dated June 12, 2023 (even with the emergency contracts with private clinics in force). The SAS presents allegations that are overturned by the Intervention and the fiscal body reiterates all its criticisms against the abuse of emergency contracts in the final report: the abuse of hand-picked contracts, with which almost 300 million euros were awarded in one year, without advertising or competitive competition or prior inspection.
In that report, the supervisory body censures the Board for the “improper” use of this type of emergency contracts a year after the impact of the health crisis, and stressed that such a decision has “no justification” because, in May 2021, “the pandemic was already very moderate,” and because it was more “predictable” than in 2020, therefore, “they should have already been contracted in accordance with the ordinary procedure.” The Andalusian Government reacted to the publication of this report with the same argument as its allegations, which the auditors had already debunked: “We did it to save lives.”
The legal case against the Andalusian Government for the hit-and-run contracts covers this entire journey, which the socialists have already defended in the Andalusian Parliament, unsuccessfully urging the PP to accept a commission of inquiry in the Chamber before turning to the courts. Their complaint compiles the first SAS expense files, the extensions, the addendums that inflated the budget and, finally, the report of the Board’s own Intervention relating to the 2021 financial year, which came to light when they had already registered the complaint. , and was incorporated subsequently, in an extension of the same carried out on July 31.
Judge Santamaría has already requested documentation on emergency contracts with private clinics from the General Intervention of the Junta de Andalucía, the Court of Accounts and the Central Intervention of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS). The requirement for these documents already appears in the order to initiate preliminary proceedings for an alleged crime of administrative prevarication, without prejudice to what may arise from the investigations during the investigation phase of the case.
Anticorruption, which has just taken over the investigation into the hand-picked contracts, will have access to the documentation requested by the judge, who is directing the investigation. From now on, the prosecutor can urge the magistrate to follow a specific line of investigation, based on his own investigations, but it will be the court that accepts or rejects his approach.
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