The judge ignores the Prosecutor's Office and will question government officials again for the purchase of sanitary material in a pandemic

Set new appearances for November, despite the request of the Public Ministry to file the investigation

MADRID, 27 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The head of the Court of Instruction Number 26 of Madrid has agreed to question again two government officials whom Vox accuses of having committed a series of irregularities for the acquisition of medical supplies at the beginning of the pandemic. She has set the appearances for November, against the criteria of the Prosecutor's Office, which considered it pertinent to file the case as it did not see "minimal" evidence to carry out the investigation.

Legal sources consulted by Europa Press have confirmed that Judge Concepción Jerez García has decided to continue with the procedure and summon again to testify two of the three charges indicated by those of Santiago Abascal in the complaint that gave rise to the case.

The same sources have specified that the decision of the magistrate takes place after Vox presented to the court an extension of the original complaint, in which alleged crimes of prevarication, embezzlement and fraud in the purchase of sanitary material by the Government in March 2020 to the director of the National Institute of Health Management (Ingesa), Alfonso María Jiménez; Paloma Rosado, from the General Directorate for the Rationalization and Centralization of Contracting (DGRCC); and Patricia Lacruz, who recently resigned from the position of General Director of the Common Portfolio of the National Health and Pharmacy System Service (DGSNSF).

The three declared last April in the Court of Plaza de Castilla, in Madrid, as defendants. According to legal sources informed this agency at the time, Jiménez denied the alleged irregularities denounced by Vox in the purchase of medical supplies and also assured that the then Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, was aware of the hiring.

In the original complaint, Vox argued that between March 13 and April 30, 2020, 56 contracts were signed by the National Institute of Health Management without any advertising and outside of any administrative procedure. In addition, he alluded to the fact that a dozen awards were made to companies of "doubtful" existence since only one company name was known.

The legal deputy secretary of the party, Marta Castro, emphasized that "310 million of the Spanish coffers went to Chinese companies." As she indicated, "in many cases" there were "deficiencies" and "non-compliance" when reporting which companies were and what experience they had. Now, according to The Objective, the judge will ask two of those named in the lawsuit again about the contracts referred to by Vox.

Last June, the Prosecutor's Office requested the file of the proceedings when considering that the indications provided by the party on the possible irregularity in the administrative contracting were based on "mere conjectures" regarding the doubts generated by the procedure used and the awardee entities , "but without specifying what types of breaches in terms of administrative contracting were incurred by the public entity in said contracts."

The Public Ministry defended in its brief that the contracts entered into by the public entity Ingesa between March and April 2020 were adapted to current regulations. He insisted that there was a "notorious" and "unquestionable" fact such as the pandemic "and that the way of contracting had to be adapted to said event."

In line, he referred to a report by the Court of Auditors made with all the contracts entered into by Ingesa between January 1 and December 31, 2020 --including those that are the subject of the complaint-- and concluded that said report " cannot lead to another conclusion than that the audited contracts were executed in full compliance with the administrative regulations".

According to the Prosecutor's Office at the time, the director of Ingesa explained during the interrogation held in April that all the contracts signed in his department were subject to prior and subsequent auditing by the Court of Auditors. Thus, he defended that "the administrative budgets for the conclusion of the contracts in all their phases were fulfilled."