The government of Juan Manuel Moreno has begun to distance itself from the two former directors of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), Miguel Ángel Guzmán and Diego Vargas, accused in the case currently being investigated by the Seville court for a alleged crime of prevarication in the awarding of nearly 300 million euros in emergency contracts to private clinics between 2021 and 2023. The Council explicitly avoided approving its management, just after presenting a fiery defense of the The current director of the SAS, Valle García, also cited as being the subject of an investigation by the judge.
García appeared this Monday afternoon at the Seville court, accompanied by her lawyer, after her name appeared on the order of the judge in charge of investigating the case, to know the rights that assist her as as an investigator. In the coming days, Judge Javier Santamaría will summon her to question her about the documentation that the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the judge himself have requested from the Andalusian Government, the General Intervention of the Council and the SAS auditors. His legal representation is not supported by the Council, which has so far declined to appear in the court case.
The current director of the SAS was appointed in December 2023. The 13th Court of Instruction of Seville is investigating a possible crime of prevarication in contractual contracts prior to its stage, since they were covered by the legal framework activated in the pandemic then that it was already repealed. The anti-corruption case joined the case, opened following a complaint from the PSOE for prevarication, embezzlement, falsification of documents and membership in a criminal organization.
A month after taking office, García began signing amendments with changes to the manually allocated budget to a handful of private hospitals (all but one were upward spending corrections). All these additions emanate from the same emergency file, authorized by Guzmán in January 2021, on which the entire judicial investigation revolves. An initial expenditure of 70 million for special contracts with private clinics, which the two previous leaders of the SAS extended until May 2023, quadrupling the initial budget to 243 million euros.
The PSOE found in the profile of the entrepreneur of the Junta de Andalucía nine amendments to this file signed by Valle García between January and July 2024, and sent them to the judge as a continuation of his complaint. 24 hours later, the magistrate indicted the last three leaders of SAS.
The Andalusian government defended Valle García on Tuesday, with a laudatory speech in which he accused the socialists of having implemented a “political complaint against a civil servant of recognized prestige.” “This is an attack on a public official. The director of the SAS is a doctor of recognized prestige, the first female leader of the SAS, with a lot of effort, a lot of merit, who since 2017 has headed the Reina Sofía Hospital in Córdoba. We do not understand the complaint that the PSOE made with such lack of rigor, because in 2024 there were no more emergency contracts,” said the spokesperson of the Council and Minister of the Treasury, Carolina España, during his appearance after the Governing Council. .
It was Spain which confirmed that the head of SAS had appeared in court the day before without the magistrate in charge of the contractual contracts case having yet notified him that it was the subject of an investigation. After her argument in favor of García, the spokesperson was asked if she had extended this closed defense to the two previous SAS leaders, also accused, and if she had put her hand to the fire for them. “Hand in the fire…?” “I am defending a person who is part of the Andalusian Government, the others are no longer part of it,” he concluded.
The Council, about to appear
The judicial investigation against the Andalusian government for contractual contracts in the SAS hit Moreno’s executive hard. For the first time, it comes in the wake of the political and judicial initiative of the PSOE, which controls the information it will provide to the court and the first stages of the instruction of the judge and the prosecutor. The indictment of the last three SAS managers last week was an unforeseen blow that caught Moreno’s team on the wrong foot.
At the San Telmo Palace – seat of the Council – they are already inclined to appear in the case as an injured party, just as the previous PSOE government did in its time in the investigation into the ERE fraud, in which the socialists entered to defend themselves. against an agenda totally marked by the PP, appearing in the affair as an accusation from the beginning.
In public, the Andalusian Executive defends the legality of emergency contracts and clings to two reports from the SAS Legal Office, from 2021, which approve these hand-made attributions. These reports claim that the effects of the pandemic were persistent three years after the repeal of the royal decree protecting emergency contracts. However, Moreno’s team has begun to keep its distance from the first two SAS leaders indicted in the case, particularly Guzmán, who is the one who signed the controversial Emergency File in 2021, from which all emanates spending increases until 2023.
The Commission spokesperson explained that they were no longer part of the Andalusian Executive. However, just a month ago, Guzmán’s name shook San Telmo, when his signature was revealed, three months after his dismissal as Deputy Minister of Health, at one of the private insurers (Asisa), which had benefited significantly from hand-signed contracts. all alone. Guzmán, as director of SAS, awarded without publicity, competition or prior inspection, almost 44 million euros to Asisa, which appointed him general manager of Andalusia three months after being dismissed from his position number two in the ministry.
The agitation caused by this signing forced the Moreno government to open an internal investigation which concluded that Guzmán’s signing violated the law of incompatibility of senior officials, but only for a few months. The Council authorized his signing in Asisa from July 2024, once the mandatory two years established by law had passed since he ceased to be director of the SAS (although he then continued to lead the ministry in as number two to the portfolio holder, Catalina García).
Now, the efforts of the Andalusian Executive place the current director of the SAS as a firewall against the complaint of prevarication of the PSOE, certain that “after May 17, 2023, there were no more contracts of urgency, neither extensions of expenditure nor extensions” of the famous 2021 file. The report of the General Intervention of the Board of Directors concerning the hiring of the SAS in 2022 and 2023 specifically denies this argument and this date on which the Andalusian executive clings to defend itself.
Addenda that “are not addenda”
This Tuesday, Spain made its own interpretation of the controversial amendments which modify the budget allocated by hand to a dozen private hospitals in 2024, on the basis of the 2021 emergency file on which the judge is investigating. The Minister of the Treasury defends that “they should not be described as addendums”. “Addendum is not the most appropriate name, it is not an addendum per se, it is a poorly named addendum. This is a document to pay for services provided during emergency contracts, they ended in May 2023, a few months before the end of the health emergency, it is simply a document for payment can be carried out in an informative manner in accordance with the services already carried out,” he explained.
The documents in the hands of the judge, signed by the current director of the SAS, are amendments with “modifications” to the increase in the budget already allocated to private hospitals. All addenda reproduce the same clause of the contract with each company, making it difficult to understand why the Commission corrected the invoicing of a contract in July 2024 which, in theory, had been executed before May 2023.
The clause says: “When 80% of the maximum total budget allocated in the “Diagnostic and/or Therapeutic Procedures” have been carried out; The contracted center must inform the SAS of possible modifications which, where applicable, may apply.” According to this, at 80% of the execution of the contract, an alert should have sounded to warn the SAS that the budget was on schedule. point of being exhausted and, possibly, it would have to be modified upwards (as ultimately happened).
