Isabel Díaz Ayuso has resorted to an express report prepared by a subordinate of her Government to justify her performance in the public contract of 1.5 million in masks that her Executive awarded to a company that is a friend of the family and for which her brother he received at least 55,850 euros. The report is signed this Friday by the Deputy Minister for Legal Affairs and Secretary General of the Governing Council, Fabio Pascua Mateo, appointed directly by the Madrid president. Ayuso’s team tries to present the report as a technician, despite the fact that the person who signs it is a political position.
In the nine-page letter distributed to the media this afternoon and signed today, February 18, Pascua Mateo assures that the Governing Council – chaired by Ayuso – “lacks any competence to alter the result of the actions of the body of contracting and, therefore, is limited to the simple receipt of information by said contracting authority in a passive manner. For all these reasons, he concludes, “it must be ruled out that there has been any “intervention” in the contract by the of any member of the Governing Council”, including the Madrid president.
“The verb to intervene requires active participation, which requires having powers of proposal, report or decision, which do not occur in this case,” says the deputy minister, a position that has nothing to do with the body of lawyers of the Community of Madrid since his designation is political.
The report prepared this Friday tries to respond to the words made this Friday first thing in the morning by the leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, in his interview at COPE. “Beyond the fact that it is illegal, the question is whether it is understandable that on April 1, 2020, when 700 people died in Spain, you can contract with your sister and receive 300,000 euros for selling masks. I would not allow my brother to charge 300,000 euros for a contract decided in a Council of Ministers,” Casado assured in the interview.
The leader of the PP has also alluded to the Code of Ethics for Senior Officials of the Madrid Community of public procurement to question this award. For this reason, in its conclusion, the technical assumption concludes that “the actions of none of the members of the Governing Council, including its President, have produced any infringement of their legally established duties of abstention, nor of those assumed voluntarily upon signing the Code of Ethics for Senior Officials of the Community of Madrid, upon receiving the accounting of the contract examined”.
The president of the Community of Madrid tried this Friday to justify the performance of her brother in the contract and her own in it by issuing a statement. In it, Ayuso explained that his brother, Tomás Díaz Ayuso, collected 55,850 euros plus VAT from the company Priviet Sportive SL –owned by Daniel Alcázar– not for mediating with the regional administration, but for the collection of the steps taken to obtain the medical material, specifically masks in China, and for its transfer to Madrid. The regional leader mentions three other invoices paid to her brother by the company of their friend, although supposedly unrelated to the public contract for the masks, of which she does not provide any information.
Ayuso’s reaction this Friday contrasts with the one maintained this Thursday when he accused the management of going against her. Today, he tried to defend himself against the accusations by issuing that statement, with this express report and with a press conference by the Minister of Finance, Javier Fernández-Lasquetty, and that of Health, Enrique Ruiz Escudero. The Minister of Justice, Enrique López, who dropped out of the call at the last minute, was also announced.
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