The PSOE’s complaint regarding Andalusian government contracts with private clinics includes up to four corruption offenses that the socialists accuse senior and former officials of the Ministry of Health: administrative prevarication, embezzlement of public funds, falsification of public documents and criminal organization. , the latter being punishable by up to eight years in prison.
The socialists’ complaint directly points to two specific directors, that of Miguel Ángel Guzmán, director of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) between November 2019 and July 2022; and his replacement, Diego Vargas, who held this position until December 2023. The popular accusation demands that they be named as under investigation, along with the officials, SAS auditors and perpetrators legal reports that approved these contracts.
Juan Manuel Moreno’s government promoted Guzmán to deputy health minister after the June 2022 elections, but dismissed him five months after his appointment, after long waiting lists for intervention surgical procedure that the Andalusian government had been waiting for for a year and a half has turned into an unprecedented public event (the increase in the number of Andalusians outside the legal attendance deadline reached 227% in one year).
Three months after his dismissal, Guzmán signed for the HLA hospital group (Asisa), one of the main beneficiaries of the handwritten contracts signed by Guzmán himself as director of the SAS, and which is currently the subject of a investigation by the investigating court number 13 of Seville. .for a case of administrative prevarication. This is the only crime, among the four reported by the PSOE, which the judge admitted to investigating, in a case to which the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office has just joined.
The socialists accuse the Board of Directors of having set up a “parallel system of manual public procurement” with private clinics, extending until June 2023 the exceptional legal framework permitted by the central government during the pandemic (2020). on the other hand, without advertising, competitive bidding or prior control, up to 300 million euros.
The complaint names the former number two at the Ministry of Health and his successor at the SAS as those primarily responsible for the alleged corruption crimes, but the PSOE leaves the door open to implicate Moreno’s executive leadership. “It seems obvious that it is not possible to keep alive a parallel system of public procurement for two and a half years, for more than 240 million euros, without the full knowledge, consent and assent of the most high levels of the government of the Junta de Andalusia,” reads the complaint filed by Diario de Sevilla and to which eldiario.es had access.
The signatory of the contracts in hand
The name of Miguel Ángel Guzmán had already caused a monumental political crisis within the Andalusian government a year ago, when he signed for Asisa three months after being fired from his post as vice minister, in violation of the law of incompatibility of senior officials. During his two and a half years at the helm of SAS, Guzmán awarded contracts worth 43.6 million euros to 11 private hospitals and clinics of the Asisa Group in Andalusia, the company that appointed him director medical of this community three months later to leave the company. Administration.
The emergency contracts (by hand) to clear waiting lists by sending patients to the private sector were carried out between January 2021 and June 2023, with the stated aim of alleviating the “overload of the own network derived from the covid-19 pandemic”. “, according to the title of the files revealed by eldiario.es on March 12, 2023.
This exclusive delivery and certain subsequent deliveries are among the documentation that the PSOE included in the complaint. 48 hours after its publication, Commission spokesperson Ramón Fernández Pacheco announced the suspension of the emergency contract system, which he had been extending for more than two years on the basis of a Covid royal decree, now repealed.
The first complaint from the PSOE concerns the initial emergency file (no. 110/2021), dated 20 2021, with an initial budget of 70 million euros, and which bears the signature of Guzmán, as director of the SAS. This file was extended four times for two years, and its budget was stretched with continued additional spending to exceed 242.7 million. The last spending extension expired seven months before Guzmán left his position as number two in the ministry (December 27, 2023) and ten months before signing for Asisa.
In their complaint, the socialists quantify the crime of embezzlement of public funds at more than 24 million euros, a figure that they extract from 10% of these 243 million allocated from hand to hand between 2021 and 2023. These 10% are the average reduction that usually occurs. in public procurement by the Commission on Tender Prices, using the open procedure, with publicity and competition, due to the different offers made by interested companies to win the contract.
The abuse of contracting for more than two years restricted this free competition, resulting in “alleged and indicative harm to Andalusian public wealth”. Another crime reported by the complaint is that of falsification of documents, since two of the resolutions to extend the contracts by hand are handwritten and signed by hand, already in 2023.
Support for the Money Laundering and State Intervention Unit
The Health Administration’s move to one of the companies most favored by contract recruiting has ignited a political storm. The Moreno government opened an internal investigation which concluded that Guzmán’s signing violated the law on incompatibilities of management positions, but only for a few months, as the mandatory two-year period from his departure from leadership was counted. of SAS, and not of his dismissal as vice-advisor.
Regardless, the Council succeeded in having the appointment rescinded and Asisa left open the question of whether it would recruit him again from July 2024, when the two years since his departure from the SAS expired .
The decision of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to entrust the judicial file of contractual contracts in Andalusia to the fight against corruption, instead of the ordinary prosecutor’s office, put Moreno’s executive in check. Until now they have underestimated the importance of the PSOE complaint, but this Thursday, in the corridors of Parliament, the Andalusian president has already revealed that they are studying participating in this matter.
The PSOE registered the complaint in court on June 20, focusing on the original file signed by Guzmán, but later added two extensions after learning of “new criminal evidence” that expanded both the criminal accusation alleged and the time horizon in which it was committed. . produce the facts.
On July 31, the socialists included in the investigation the “unfavorable” final report from the SAS Centrale d’Intervention relating to the 2021 financial year, which repeated a large part of the story published until then in the information of this journal on emergency contracts. The auditors also accused the Board of Directors of using a “totally repealed” state legal framework to continue to “inappropriately” expand a contract hiring system “without any justification,” when the pandemic was already “ very temperate.
The team of Juan Espadas, secretary general of the PSOE-A, first filed a complaint highlighting the criminal acts, but without directly blaming anyone, not even the Andalusian government. Subsequently, when it emerged as a popular accusation, he transformed his complaint into one that he directed against the two senior officials and indirectly against his hierarchical superiors within the Moreno executive.
Among the requests addressed to the judge who opens the procedure, the proposal to request collaboration in the investigation of the Central Brigade of Investigation into Money Laundering and the Fight against Corruption, the Central Economic Crime Unit stands out. and tax of the General Commission of the Judicial Police. legal assistance from the General Intervention of the State Administration.
