Former SEPI president Vicente Fernández denied this Saturday before Judge Antonio Piña having participated in the alleged contract rigging that the National Court is investigating, legal sources inform elDiario.es. Vicente Fernández is the only one of three people arrested in the latest alleged corruption plot dismantled this week to have made a statement.
Former socialist activist and councilor Leire Díez and businessman Antxon Alonso, linked to former PSOE leader Santos Cerdán, used their right not to do so. The three men were released after the anti-corruption prosecution did not request their imprisonment and after spending almost three days in detention.
The three men are under investigation for crimes of prevarication, embezzlement, influence peddling and criminal organization in relation to allegations of fraud in public markets from 2021, judicial sources report. That is, once Vicente Fernández left SEPI and began collecting money from Servinabar, Antxon Alonso’s company considered a way to collect bribes from Santos Cerdán and the rest of the members of the conspiracy that the Supreme Court is investigating. Before the judge, Vicente Fernández denied any irregularity. He was questioned about amounts charged that investigators suspect were commissions for fraud allegations, which he denied.
Vicente Fernández was president of SEPI after the arrival of the PSOE in Moncloa: between June 2018 and October 2019. A trusted politician of the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, he spent only 15 months at the head of the public company until his involvement in the Aznalcóllar affair – of which he was acquitted last week – led to his dismissal. It is from this moment that his suspicious activity begins. Vicente Fernández then began looking for work within the PSOE, party sources explain. The same sources believe that the former PSOE organizational secretary Santos Cerdán would have responded to Vicente Fernández’s work concerns by putting him in contact with Antxon Alonso.
The investigation focuses on the influence that Vicente Fernández could have exerted within SEPI after having had to leave his position and on how Servinabar could benefit from the rewards. In 2021, according to a report from the Provincial Treasury of Navarre included in the summary of the Cerdán case, the former president of SEPI began working for Servinabar. In two years, Fernández collected 100,000 euros from this Antxon Alonso company.
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