The Government authorized the former president of SEPI to sign for Servinabar after having retained his position for 18 months

The administrative body that manages and controls the incompatibilities of senior officials He obtained authorization on May 19, 2021 before their activity. Law 3/2015, regulating the exercise of the high function of the General Administration of the State, does not require that the entity responding to these requests refers to the department where it exercises its function. In this case it was SEPI, the conglomerate of state enterprises dependent on the Ministry of Finance, Maria Jesus Montero, which Vicente Fernández directed until October 4, 2019.

The government office responsible for inspecting revolving doors He did not oppose his move to the company Servinabar 2000 SL understanding that there was no inconsistency and issued a favorable resolution. A few days before, on May 11, 2019, this also allowed him to collaborate with a Sevillian law firm, as indicated by the transparency portal of the General Administration of the State.

Authorization from the state agency was a mandatory procedure because it was still two years had not passed since his resignationthe deadline set by Law 3/2015 to be able to veto the jobs of former senior civil servants. This limitation is intended to prevent them from profiting from their past knowledge and decisions. Allows return if you believe there is no conflict of interest. This is how the aforementioned office, which depended at the time Minister of Territorial Policy and Public Service, Carolina Daríasand who, two months later, joined María Jesús Montero, after a government overhaul in July 2021.

The times are relevant in this story which gave rise to a case that Judge Antonio Piña keeps under summary secrecy and which highlights alleged crimes of prevarication, embezzlement, influence peddling and criminal organization. Vicente Fernández only signed for Servinabar his command post at SEPI has not been filled by the current first vice-president of the Government and leader of the Andalusian PSOE with the appointment of Belén Gualda González, director of Navantiaon March 30, 2021.

Eighteen months with the vacant position

For nearly 18 months, Montero kept Fernández as president of the Spanish state conglomerate that runs participations in strategic companies such as Correos, Navantia, RTVE, Indra or Telefónicahoping that the trial in which he had been accused and which had forced him to resign would be archived. This focused on a hypothesis assembly during the award of the Aznalcóllar mine to Seville in 2015 by the Government of Andalusia. This did not happen since the Seville court ordered the reopening of the investigation, which was dismissed twice by the investigating judge. The outcome of this case was not known until December 5, ten years after the competition, and after a trial which resulted in the acquittal of the 16 accused, including Fernández, no crime having been found.

Vicente Fernández was provisionally released last Saturday after appearing before the judge of the National Court who is investigating this preliminary procedure with the imposition of precautionary measures such as withdrawal of passport and ban on leaving the country. Behind us is a new week of shocks for the Sánchez government marked by the arrests of the former head of SEPI, the “plumber” of the PSOE and former director of institutional relations, philately, studies and future of Correos, Leire Díez and businessman Antxon Alonso.

The anti-corruption prosecution did not request the imprisonment of any of the three, who left the national court on their own. The judge adopted some preventive measures such as the obligation to appear every two weeks in the face of “numerous signs” and the “seriousness of the alleged facts”.

In this macro-operation, more than twenty files at the headquarters of the Post Office and the various organizations that depend on it of the Ministries of Finance and Ecological Transition and other companies in the plot to intervene in the documentation on the award of contracts suspected of being rigged.

Fernandez landed at SEPI in June 2018 with Monterowho arrived in Madrid after being appointed auditor general of the Junta de Andalucía while she was advisor to the Treasury. After her arrest, the government’s “number two” assured that “for six years” she had not maintained “any type of contact” with “this man”, as she now calls him. He also disclaims any responsibility for having been placed in this strategic state position, with a salary close to 220,000 euros gross per year. He explained to journalists last Friday that he had decided to sign it, first as auditor general of the Junta de Andalucía and, later, as president of SEPI because it had been approved for your professional CV and that she is in favor of putting these merits before her activism within the PSOE.

The minister also affirmed that she was not aware of the affairs of Servinabar, the small Navarrese company where the former president of SEPI worked with the authorization of the Central Executive.

Servinabar claimed nearly two million euros for alleged services and “aid” granted to Acciona, winner of the renovation work on the Centennial Bridge in Sevilleaccording to a report from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard submitted to Supreme Court magistrate Leopoldo Puente, who has another open file regarding the allegedly irregular allocations of public works tendered by the Ministry of Transport under the leadership of the socialist Jose Luis Abalos.

75% of Servinabar’s revenues, or around six million euros, came from Acciona. This construction company allegedly paid a bribe in exchange for the orders and Servinabar was responsible for channeling the commissions. approximately 2% of each workwhich were then distributed between Cerdán, Ábalos and his former advisor, Koldo García, as shown by the messages they exchanged.