1674219326 The Murcia public prosecutor denounces alleged irregularities in the award

The Murcia public prosecutor denounces alleged irregularities in the award of contracts in the port of Cartagena

The Murcia public prosecutor denounces alleged irregularities in the award

Prosecutors have filed a complaint in the Cartagena courts alleging irregularities in procurement by the Cartagena Port Authority (APC), the public body that manages the activities of this city’s port, between 2015 and 2021, although the organization depends on Puertos del Estado and it is the central government that appoints its presidents, it does so at the request of the government of the autonomous community. It is currently led by Yolanda Muñoz, who has already held various senior positions in the regional administration of the PP, including Director General of Architecture, Housing and Land between 2011 and 2015, Secretary General of the Ministry of Development between 2015 and 2019 and Secretary General of the Ministry of Education until the end of the year, when she became president of the port.

The prosecutor’s investigation dates back at least to 2015, so it would also involve his predecessor Antonio Sevilla, who was also proposed by the Murcian PP and was a public operations adviser before moving to the port authority autonomous community.

The action of the public prosecutor is based on a complaint lodged in September 2021 by the trade union delegations of Comisiones Obreras and UTG to the Operations Committee of the Port of Cartagena. As confirmed to EL PAÍS by sources of these unions, in their complaint they pointed to possible irregularities and favoritism of companies in the procurement, among which stands out the tender of the digitization project office SOPRA, worth almost a million of euros.

The unions also pointed to possible irregularities in the acquisition of computers through minor contracts, the tender for organizing the Vive Tu Puerto cultural week and various other contracts related to infrastructure works. They also pointed to preferential treatment in the allocation of various posts as area managers and other posts.

The works council also denounced at the time the alleged coercion of an engineer who had refused to sign certain specifications and who was sanctioned by the Port Authority.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into these incidents in November 2021 and a large-scale police operation was launched, which led to the deployment of the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit of the National Police (UDEF) to the offices of the APC last March 2022, where numerous documents on the intervened contracts. In addition, the agents took a statement from port officials about the criteria followed in drafting the contractual documents for the allegedly rigged contracts and in awarding them.

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As a result of this investigation, the prosecutor now sees in a public document indications of possible crimes such as subterfuge, influence, disclosure of secrets and use of privileged information and untruth, which is why they have referred the complaint to the courts of Cartagena, the judge in charge of investigating the case decides or not.