The Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard raided a bar in Seville allegedly linked to Vicente Fernándezformer president of the National Society of Industrial Participations. The head of SEPI remains detained in connection with a public procurement operation under suspicion. In addition to Fernández, former PSOE activist Leire Díez and Antxon Alonso, considered by investigators to be partners of former PSOE organizational secretary Santos Cerdán in the Servinabar company, were arrested this Wednesday.
The La Bola bar, registered by the UCO, located on Marie Curie Street on the Cartuja Island in Seville and next to the emblematic Bioclimatic Sphere of the 1992 Universal Exhibitioncould have been used for money laundering purposes. The establishment maintained its activity normally during the day on Thursday.
Sources close to the investigation indicated that this hotel establishment is managed by the company La Bola Innovación, created in 2014 by the associate of the former president of SEPI. The woman served as administrator until June 2023, when Fernández took over.
The company had modest results through 2020, but has since improved markedly. The year the former president of SEPI began to lead it, reached a turnover of 30% more than the previous year. The UCO seized accounts and devices from the premises to determine whether they could have been used to launder allegedly illicit money from the investigated land.
Fernández was acquitted by the Seville court, along with fifteen other defendants, for the alleged rigging of the international call for tenders awarded to the company México-Minorbis exploitation in the Aznalcóllar mining reserve. This trial, in which the Prosecutor’s Office requested the acquittal of the accused, placed in the dock civil servants of the Junta de Andalucía and technicians who participated in the procurement table and the technical commission of the process, among them the former president of SEPI, who resigned due to his involvement in the case.
Fernández, who, among other positions, served as auditor general of the Council – the supreme body of internal control of the economic management of the Andalusian administration -, He was Secretary General of the Ministry of Economy, Innovation, Science and Employment of Andalusia. when Aznalcóllar was assigned to Mexico-Minorbis.
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