Judge Manuel Jesús Gómez, who is investigating health contracts divided by the Andalusian government in the province of Cádiz, ordered the General State Intervention (IGAE) to determine whether these agreements worth 232 million euros comply with the law and what damage they may have caused to public finances. The magistrate seeks to analyze in depth all the suspicious contracts that the purchasing center of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) signed in this province with private clinics in 2021, which is why he calls on the experts of the Ministry of Finance to ratify “the irregularities” already detected by the auditors of the Andalusian Junta, a significant step for the file.
“Analysis of all contracts subject to investigation in the procedure, including additions, extensions and modifications, for the purpose of verifying and ruling on the irregularities that appear detected in the minutes of the General Intervention of the Andalusian Government in the archives”, we read in the judge’s order, dated last Thursday and reported this Tuesday by Cadena SER. The PSOE, appearing as a popular accusation, had demanded this expertise now ordered and requested the same assistance from the State Intervention for the cause of emergency health contracts before a court in Seville, so far without success.
The SAS Intervention has already analyzed a sample of the contracts closed in Cádiz and considered that they were “in fraud of the law”, but now the magistrate decrees that the IGAE analyzes the total of the contracts, which in this province included 135,767 invoices that totaled 235 million minor contracts distributed in 175 files. The judge specifies that the experts must carry out a technical analysis of the contract prices, including a comparison between the prices agreed with private healthcare and those which would have been charged if the law on public sector contracts had been respected, which involves competition and advertising. Auditors must compare the prices obtained by the Andalusian Government with those achieved by other autonomous communities.
The Court of Instruction 3 of Cádiz requires from the IGAE “the technical analysis of each of the files analyzed to determine whether or not there was a valid justification for the provision of the contracted and paid services”. That is, the experts will examine each contract one by one, including the budgetary and financial analysis of their adaptation to the current standard, with the phases of authorization and approval of public expenditure, as well as the alleged damage caused to the public treasury, “even in an approximate or potential way”.
The Andalusian executive appealed Judge Gómez’s investigation to the Cádiz court, which has not yet resolved the case. Podemos, appearing as a popular accusation in this matter, instead requested that the case continue because there are still steps to be taken, including the ratification of an expert on the irregularities revealed by the provincial intervention.
This political party highlighted “the singular procedural anomaly” which involves recognizing the capacity of the SAS to appeal the investigation aimed at determining whether there has been damage to the public treasury, and at the same time incurring its subsidiary civil liability. “This administration should be most interested in investigating and clarifying the alleged facts reported, and not in exercising a kind of co-defense of the people under investigation,” Podemos denounced two weeks ago against the position of the Andalusian government.
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