Next Wednesday, September 18, the Provincial Court of Toledo will host the trial of two former managers of the former Higher School of Gastronomy, one of the oldest in the city and which changed hands last March. The prosecution accuses the two defendants, who were managers during the previous phase of the training center, of two aggravated crimes of social security fraud.
This is the controversial training center now managed by the ultra-Catholic organization Educatio Servanda under the name of “CES Juan Pablo II” after PP and Vox, who govern the City Hall, completed last March the transfer of the public building where the houses are located. Previously, the Cofradía del Ciento Foundation was in charge of managing this school.
The former Ecole Supérieure de Gastronomie has a history of murky management that is now surfacing with the announcement of the trial. According to a document from the prosecution to which he had access elDiarioclm.esThe accused are Carlos Viana Antón, who was president of the Cofradía del Ciento Foundation from 2004 to 2019; and Manuel Conde Perezagua, director of the school in its previous stage. The National Police discovered this alleged fraud in early 2019.
The prosecution’s indictment states that the Cofradía del Ciento Foundation had been carrying out its commercial activity since its incorporation in June 1998, managing the Higher School of Gastronomy and Hospitality of Toledo and operating two restaurants open to the public.
Due to this commercial activity, this foundation did not pay contributions for the workers whose services it used, contracting with Social Security a global debt of 425,832 euros, corresponding to the period from August 2005 to October 2018. During this period, it requested the General Treasury of Social Security for a total of five debt deferrals, which were “systematically violated by the entity.”
The “considerable” increase in debt
Specifically, between 2015 and 2018, the debt increased considerably. In this situation, given that they were not up to date with their payments and that the debt with the Social Security Treasury had only increased since 2005, with the aim of continuing to operate in commercial traffic “without complying with their obligations”, the two defendants, acting in coordination, created in 2009 the company “Gestión y Supervisión de Empresas SL” whose president and CEO was the defendant Manuel Conde Perezagua; and its vice president and also CEO, the other defendant, Carlos Viana.
Thus, the purpose and activity of the Cofradía del Ciento Foundation and the company Gestión y Supervisión de Empresas SL coincided, there was “an obvious confusion between the two entities”, the latter being the manager of the two restaurants open to the public. the School of Gastronomy.
The Prosecutor’s Office states that, in this way, especially since 2014, there have been “continuous transfers of workers” between the two entities, as well as salary payments by the company “Management and Supervision of Companies SL” to workers of the Cofradía del Ciento Foundation, while both entities shared contact details, the same website or the same telephone number.
On the other hand, between 2015 and 2018, both companies shared the same registered office in Toledo, although the ordinary expenses of gas, water and electricity were borne by the Cofradía del Ciento Foundation, despite the lack of income. However, the company Gestión y Supervisión de Empresas SL had income and did not pay any of the aforementioned expenses arising from the use of the same registered office.
The prosecution considers the events reported to constitute an aggravated offence of social security fraud. It is requesting for each of them three years in prison with a special ban on the right to passive suffrage during the sentence; a fine of almost one million euros (921,523.16) for the debt, plus interest, owed to Social Security for the years 2014 to 2018; and the loss of the possibility of obtaining subsidies or public aid.
This trial takes place a few months after the municipal government team gave the green light to the ultra-Catholic organization Educatio Servanda to take over the definitive management of the school, now renamed CES Juan Pablo II. The prior authorization was approved by the previous team of the municipal government, of the PSOE, but the definitive transfer was ratified by the current one, in the hands of PP and Vox.
Educatio Servanda, an organization that has had some controversies in the management of charter schools in the Community of Madrid, has managed to take a decisive step in the city: taking over a gastronomic school that had already been announced months ago but that had not been resolved precisely because of the debts of its former director, the Cofradía del Ciento Foundation, which are now being judged.
The Foundation that will now take charge of its management has encountered several obstacles. The Board of Directors of the City Council, when the PSOE was in power, given that it was a public building and as a concessionary entity, approved the transfer of the use of the building to the ultra-Catholic foundation. But the latter had not obtained full ownership because it was still in the hands of the Brotherhood of the Hundred.
It was last March, after the green light from the City Council, that the transfer became definitive, although Educatio Servanda had already organized an event a year earlier to present the renovated center in this neighborhood of Toledo. The president of this Foundation, Juan Carlos Corvera, already spoke of these gastronomy studies as his own. The foundation launched this acquisition with the famous chef Pepe Rodríguez as ambassador.
The delay in the final transfer to the ultra-Catholic organization is due to the non-compliance with the clauses of the previous agreement, as detailed by the director of the CES, Amalia Almendro, a member of Educatio Servanda, to this newspaper. “There is a lot to refine there,” said the director of the center, although she avoided detailing what these clauses were that were not respected. But she was referring to the controversial history of the building and its managers.
The building was built within the framework of the Urban Programme of European Funds granted for the Polígono district of Toledo in 1999. Although its property is municipal, the City Council approved from the beginning its concession to the Cofradía del Ciento Foundation, linked to the Provincial Association of Toledo Hospitality. In exchange, this organization provided it with equipment. 76 million old pesetas were spent.
A story of disagreements and an investigation
Then the disagreements began. The most notable occurred in 2002 when the Provincial Hospitality Association informed the Fundación del Ciento of its decision to assume sole management of the Higher School of Gastronomy due to the confrontation of the models (free public and private paying) and the accumulated debts. But the Brotherhood declared that it would not abandon the project and maintained its management, requesting the support of the Government of Castilla-La Mancha and the City Council of Toledo.
The strained relations between the two partners continued and the debt continued to increase, although the total amount was not made public until much later. Five years ago, the ABC newspaper reported that Manuel Conde Perezagua, then director of the Higher School of Gastronomy, and Carlos Viana, president of the Brotherhood of the Hundred, had been arrested for an alleged fraud of four million euros in Social Security.
All the people mentioned have denied the facts, have asked the press for corrections, and neither the newspaper nor the police have made public the details of this case. Now comes the trial of these two people for this alleged fraud, while the new leaders of the ultra-Catholic organization continue the activity in the “renovated” school.
