The judge who is investigating whether there was a crime of embezzlement in the “massive” sharing of Andalusian Health Service (SAS) contracts with private health care in Cádiz made a pole vault in the investigation by demanding “expert assistance” from the General State Intervention to analyze all suspected expenditure files and prepare reports on the justification of the contracts, the prices authorized by the SAS and “the damage caused to the public treasury, even approximately or potentially”.
In an order issued on December 4, to which this newspaper had access, the investigating judge number 3 of Cádiz, Manuel Jesús Gómez, recognizes the request of the PSOE, as a popular accusation, which requested the participation of state interveners in a matter that directly affects the government of Juan Manuel Moreno, represented as subsidiary civil manager. The objective of the expertise consists of “a global and complete analysis of the minor fractions suspected of illegality”, specifies the document.
Two courts are currently investigating contractual hiring, without advertising or competition, within the SAS: a judge in Seville indicted the last three Andalusian health directors for alleged prevarication due to the abuse of emergency contracts between 2021 and 2024, relying on the exceptional legal framework of the pandemic when it was already repealed (they will testify before the judge in November).
The other case, that of Cádiz, is investigating an alleged crime of embezzlement in the award of 235 million euros in hundreds of minor contracts divided into pieces in this province during the 2021 financial year. The accused here is the purchasing manager of SAS in Cádiz, who has already testified before the judge, alongside the provincial auditors who published a very severe report denouncing the “abuse” of minor contracts and the massive “splitting” of these contracts with the same company and for the same profit.
Last October, the Cádiz judge rejected the appeal filed by SAS’s lawyers to archive the investigation and decided to extend it for another six months. From now on, the magistrate asks the General Intervention of the State to send him a series of expert opinions on the enormous volume of suspected split contracts.
Among the “technical reports” requested, the “determination of the damage caused to the public treasury, even in an approximate or potential manner, emerges from the analysis of the consequences of the presence, or absence, in the files analyzed, in accordance with the appropriate contractual modality and the legal obligations of publicity, competition and competition”.
The magistrate also asks state auditors to review “the prices” resulting from the fragmentation of contracts and to make a “contrasting assessment” with the costs that would have been incurred with “the procedures provided for by the law on public sector contracts and the mediation of advertising and competition in contracts”. The objective of this stage of the investigation is also to determine “whether or not the provision of the contracted and paid services was duly justified”.
(There will be an extension)
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