Valencia City Council, headed by María José Català, from the PP, detected this September an alleged fraud of 194,305 euros in the external company that handles the accounting and payments of the Congress Palace. The City Council will sue the company if it does not pay the defrauded amount, according to municipal sources who have informed EFE.
The fraud was detected on 10 September when a supplier company informed the contractor responsible for payments that it had not received outstanding amounts since June. The complaint filed by the City Council states that the computer identity of the external company was impersonated to initiate “a procedure for unauthorized modification of a supplier’s bank details”.
The council says that the company breached the protocol of the Palacio de Congresos which establishes the way in which changes must be made in the bank accounts of suppliers into which payments are made.
The accounting of the Palacio de Congresos has been outsourced since 2021, and everything necessary for its full operational development and optimal functioning. The company affected by the fraud has already claimed reimbursement of the defrauded amount from its insurance company.
The opposition parties in Valencia City Council, Compromís and PSPV, have demanded transparency and rigour and that all the money stolen from the Palacio de Congresos be recovered. Upon hearing the news, Compromís councillor Eva Coscollá has demanded “that the money stolen from the Palacio de Congresos be recovered and that cybersecurity controls be immediately initiated” in all municipal bodies.
He recalled that in 2021, the current mayor, María José Català, stated when a 21,000 euro scam occurred at the Palacio de Congresos that “political responsibilities had to be established, because the stolen money comes from the taxes of the Valencians”, which Coscollá claims to “subscribe to”.
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For his part, the PSPV councillor Javier Mateo has demanded “transparency and rigour” from the municipal government regarding the aforementioned fraud “concealed for days”, as well as a review of the anti-fraud procedures “to confirm that everything is done correctly and that this situation does not happen again”. “We have been denouncing the opacity of the management of the Catalá government for a long time and now a fraud has been added, which has been known for days and which the Council of the Palace has not been informed of until it has appeared in the press”, he pointed out.
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