The government team of the Alcalá de Henares City Council, which leads Judith Piquetof the Popular Party, announced yesterday the creation of a special commission of inquiry into the contracts of the PSOE during the previous municipal stage for thousands of euros with companies belonging to relatives of two of its councilors. The commission will be voted on in a plenary session of the city council next Tuesday, September 17.
The deputy spokesperson for the local government team, Orlena de Miguel, appeared yesterday to announce the decision taken by the PP to open a special commission on the awarding of contracts to relatives of two councilors of the previous socialist government of Alcalá, Patricia Sánchez and Blanca Ibarra, who continues to be part of the municipal corporation. Specifically, the contracts under investigation amount to approximately 40,000 euros awarded to communication and graphic arts companies in minor contracts. The contracts were awarded between 2019 and 2023, the period during which the PSOE of Javier Rodríguez Palacios governed.
After learning about the contracts, the mayor ordered the preparation of two files of confidential information regarding the possible existence of irregularities, in order to verify the existence or not of facts that could constitute a disciplinary fault or another type of responsibility. The PP wants the commission to determine the political responsibilities for the actions carried out during this period, with the previous government team.
The PP considers it verified that in the mandate from 2019 to 2023, under the socialist municipal government, “numerous minor contracts were awarded to companies of relatives of its councilors.” These contracts, the popular emphasize, were approved within the board of directors, where most of the time the two councilors were present.
“Beyond the legal responsibilities that could be settled in court and to which we will of course go, the current government team wants to clarify all these responsibilities,” they warn in the PP, where they look “not only at the two councilors mentioned, but also at the members of the corporation and other temporary and trusted high officials of the previous government, immersed in this irregular and amoral hiring procedure with members of their families.
The weight of the law
The deputy spokesman for the Piquet municipality recalled that the law on public contracts “prohibits people related to elected officials from contracting with the public sector”. Specifically, he stressed, reference is made to “spouses, people linked by a similar relationship of emotional coexistence, ascendants and descendants, as well as second-degree relatives by consanguinity or affinity”. “It is obvious that the behavior of these people who remain socialist councilors and former members of the board of directors fall under this article of the law”, he warned.
The PP thus addressed the socialist spokesman, before the special commission of inquiry that can be approved in the city council: “We want to know if you are really engaged in the investigation of possible cases of corruption in the public administration or only in the partisan use of all state institutions to create hoaxes that hide the corruption of his party at the national level and his management at the head of the city hall of Alcalá de Henares.
The PSOE, for its part, expressed its “total calm” in the face of statements that “reveal the nervousness of the government team and in particular of the mayor, Judith Piquet, not to mention her disastrous management and her problems with Justice”. “We hope that nothing that is said will have penal consequences”, underlines the PSOE, which will vote in favour of the commission of inquiry.
