The majority association of directors of the Community of Madrid, Adimad, issued a statement this Wednesday in which it clarifies that its responsibility in the case investigated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office regarding the split works for the construction of educational centers in Madrid is null. “The directors of the Institutes of the Community of Madrid have very limited or non-existent management autonomy in terms of human resources management or economic management, while they depend on the different bodies of the Administration, especially the Territorial Area Directorates (DAT), hereinafter, or the General Directorates,” they emphasize.
In recent months, elDiario.es has revealed that the Ministry of Education of the government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, under the leadership of Enrique Ossorio (now president of the Assembly of Madrid), has built at least eight vocational training and teacher training centers without competition, without budget, without official records and without passing any economic control. Two of the cases were forwarded to the Prosecutor’s Office by the current Ministry of Education due to indications that there may be a crime of corruption or prevarication.
“It is important to note that the directors of the centers have no capacity to send extraordinary credits to their centers for major works or for the acquisition of equipment that exceeds what is established in the corresponding regulations. It is always the Ministry, through the DAT or the corresponding General Directorate, that decides, orders and releases these extraordinary credits, the amount of which is deposited in the current account of the center with the description of the final use for which it is intended. continues the press release of the association, which represents 240 of the 360 secondary school directors in the Region.
The first known case is that of Ciudad Escolar. A university hospital was built there to allow students from the professional health training course to do internships with a budget of 2.4 million euros. One of the directors told elDiario.es that they simply did what they were asked from above: “We followed the orders of the General Directorate.” The following year, construction began on the Alcalá School of Art with the same payment system to pay 1.2 million euros.
After these cases, elDiario.es revealed illegal reforms in five other centers. One of the star post-pandemic projects of the President of the Community was also built with this illegal and opaque system: the Ignacio Ellacuría Distance Learning Center.
The current Minister of Education, Emilio Viciana, has referred this case of contract splitting, which concerns the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, when Enrique Ossorio was a councilor, to the Prosecutor’s Office. His number two was Rocío Albert, now Minister of Economy and Finance. The PSOE of Madrid has also reported the case revealed by elDiario.es to the Prosecutor’s Office and Más Madrid has requested Viciana’s appearance in July, which did not happen because it was blocked by the PP, the majority in the Chamber. They have also requested a commission of inquiry in the Assembly. In addition, Education has ordered audits to determine the extent of the illegality, although for the moment it has reported it in its writings to the directors of the Institute (they are tenured) and to a dismissed deputy director of the FP. However, the work was known to the ministry and, at least, to one director general, besides the fact that the modus operandi was repeated outside the FP and in all areas except the north.
Adimad specifically appeals to responsibilities in his last paragraph: “We request that the Ministry of Education clarify the appropriate responsibilities and adopt the necessary measures in this regard, with regard to the authorization and granting of extraordinary credits for the execution of these major works in the centers concerned. It should be recalled that until now only the management teams of these centers were responsible and audited, and that they only complied with the directives of higher authorities.
