High amount illegal commissions. Mayors in a hurry to collect bribes. Installment payments with money in envelopes. The indictment presented by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor in part six of the summary of the punic case, in which it is investigated the alleged irregular award of millionaire public contracts between 2012 and 2014 by eight consistories of the Community of Madrid and one of Extremadura to the company Cofely España, reveals unknown details behind the scenes of the plot. The Prosecutor’s Office accuses nine aldermen for these acts, in addition to another 28 individuals and the commercial epicenter of the match as a legal entity, in a letter in which it highlights that the mayors of the municipalities of Parla (the socialist José María Fraile), Móstoles (the popular Daniel Ortiz Espejo, a former deputy in the Madrid Assembly) and Collado Villalba (Agustín Juárez, also from the PP) allegedly each requested close to 500,000 euros for manipulating the energy efficiency contests in their municipalities. The high figures supposedly demanded by these three aldermen forced the plot to look for new formulas to collect and divide the deliveries.
The investigation indicates that the contracts under suspicion in this piece of the summary add up to more than 224 million euros, which makes it the largest fraud of the entire macro-cause. Of this figure, 54.6 million corresponds to the Parla contract; 60 million, to Móstoles, and 35 million, to Collado Villalba. Anti-corruption requests for the mayor of the first municipality, the socialist José María Fraile, 11 years in prison for the crimes of prevarication, bribery, disclosure of reserved information, influence peddling and fraud; six years for two crimes for Móstoles, Daniel Ortiz, and seven years and four months for four crimes for Collado Villalba, Agustín Juárez. Judge Manuel García-Castellón, instructor of the punic casehas already issued the order to open the trial, so it only remains for the National Court to set the date for the start of the oral hearing.
In its brief, the Prosecutor’s Office emphasizes that the corruption network considered these bribes “as one more expense of the contract” that was awarded to them, so to meet their payment they increased the amount of their offer in such a way that that money came out from public funds and not from its profit margin. “Most of the mayors and technicians received their gifts in cash and for the most part, in installments, with new requests for commissions and amounts sometimes occurring,” adds the letter, to then detail municipality by municipality the indications of the alleged irregularities. “In the first municipalities, small amounts of gifts had been agreed,” Anticorruption highlights, specifying that in Torrejón de Velasco the investigation has not revealed any payment, and in Moraleja de Enmedio (both governed by the PP) allegedly paid only 30,000 euros.
However, in Parla (128,000 inhabitants), “the prices of gifts were exorbitant.” In this municipality there came to be “an initial commitment to pay commissions for an approximate amount of 600,000 euros” which was later reduced to 500,000 euros divided into monthly installments of 50,000 euros. Always according to Anticorruption, the mayor and his chief of staff, Antonio Borrego – for whom he is asking for 10 years and six months in prison – were the presumed recipients of that money. After the agreement, both were supposedly in charge of pressuring the municipal technicians who were to prepare the tender specifications so that they included Cofely’s demands in such a way that the tender became a “tailor-made suit” and “a pantomime” to that this company was made with the contest. It was the only company that showed up.
To obtain the money from the bribes, the plot used false invoices for non-existent works for the city council that were issued by companies belonging to the builder David Marjaliza, the confessed ringleader of the plot and who collaborates with justice. This businessman was the “conductor, according to the terminology of Anticorruption, between Cofely and the municipalities thanks to” the network of contacts and influences woven since the year 2000 with mayors, councilors and councilors of certain towns in the southwestern area of Madrid “from of the friendship he had with the other alleged ringleader of the plot, Francisco Granados, who was Esperanza Aguirre’s counselor in the regional government and who is not charged in this piece of the summary.
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Something similar to what happened in Parla happened in Collado Villalba (63,000 inhabitants), governed by the popular Juárez. The Anticorruption brief details that the councilor proposed the payment of a commission of between 400,000 and 500,000 euros to be set “depending on the final prices of the contract.” Of course, the two supposed intermediaries of the alderman asked the plot for a first payment of 10,000 euros “as proof of ‘good will’ when the administrative file that had to lead to the contest had not been started. Subsequently, between both parties “a payment schedule was agreed with successive installments and in installments at a rate of 35,000 euros.” According to the investigation, before the first arrests of the Punic Operation took place, in October 2014, the plot had supposedly given “approximately 171,500 euros to the mayor and his collaborators” in cash. In a telephone conversation intervened by the Civil Guard before those arrests, the alderman demanded “an advance for that month of October” of 70,000 euros “which he said he needed to carry out the reform of a hotel business.” Along with the mayor, four other people linked to the town hall of this town are being prosecuted.
In Móstoles (207,000 inhabitants), the investigation points to the mayor, Daniel Ortiz Espejo; one of his councilors, Alejandro Utrilla, and his brother, Mario Utrilla, who was mayor of the town of Sevilla la Nueva, all from the PP. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the three asked Cofely for 500,000 euros as a commission and the company accepted. “The negotiations on the payment of commissions and their amounts were prior to the award of the Cofely contract and intensified after the contract was awarded in recognition of the assistance provided by the mayor and the councilor to obtain the contract,” says the letter that speaks of “dozens of calls and messages and several face-to-face meetings”. According to Anticorruption, the latter were held “with great demand and urgency” to demand “prompt payment” of the bribes. When the first arrests took place, the constructor had only given 6,000 euros to one of the Utrilla brothers.
The investigation highlights that in the case of Móstoles, the contract had “a singularity” that allegedly “made it extremely difficult to obtain cash funds to pay the gifts claimed by the Utrilla brothers on behalf of them and the mayor.” Faced with the impossibility of passing on the high amount agreed upon as a commission in the charges that Cofely made through the Marjaliza companies to the Móstoles town hall itself, the scheme decided to overbill in other consistories, specifically in those of Serranillos del Valle and Valdemoro, whose Energy efficiency contests were also allegedly rigged. The plot agreed to pay 240,000 euros in two years, and that the first part of that amount, 122,000 euros, was advanced by Marjaliza. Finally, it did not materialize due to his arrest at the beginning of the Punic Operation.
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