The judge summons Bárcenas to testify in the open investigation on bribery after his recent confession

Judge Santiago Pedraz, who maintains an open line of investigation in the National Court on the crime of bribery reflected in box b of the PP, has decided to summon Luis Bárcenas to testify next Monday.

The magistrate has made this decision after the last confession of the former popular treasurer, where he showed his willingness to collaborate in this piece of the

Gürtel case

that is still under investigation, and after the court that is currently judging the parallel accounting of the training has decided to suspend the oral hearing until at least next Tuesday.

Pedraz has set the interrogation at 10.30 in the morning.

The investigations on bribery, which try to prove the link between the donations of businessmen to the box and the award of public contracts, is a derivative of the investigation on parallel accounting that began to be judged last Monday at the National Court.

This line of the instruction was shelved in 2014 due to the lack of evidence, but it could be reopened after advances in other plots (such as Lezo) and the confessions of several implicated in other trials.

In fact, as EL PAÍS advanced, Pedraz has put the magnifying glass on 600 million in works granted during the Governments of José María Aznar, as well as in different concessions of the Community of Madrid during the Esperanza Aguirre stage.

Until now, Bárcenas had been silent on this part of the

Gürtel case

.

However, in his recent confession, sent on January 26 to the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office, the former treasurer admitted for the first time that contracts were given in exchange for bites during the era of President Aznar.

In addition, immersed in a fierce war with the PP, he showed his predisposition to collaborate with justice.

His lawyer Gustavo Galán, in an interview with this newspaper, went even further and stated that his client would reveal to Pedraz new information on "about the finalist commissions."

Precisely, the main difficulty encountered by the researchers in this piece on bribery is to identify which entry of money in the parallel accounting of the PP corresponds to the award of a specific work.

In other words, in order to charge someone, it is necessary to document who pays, who receives, when and in exchange for what.

And at that point, Bárcenas says he has a lot to say.

He controlled the cash flows, and the investigating judges indicated in several cases that he would have direct knowledge of what work was given in exchange for what amount: “The funds were delivered in exchange for facilitation by Bárcenas and Álvaro Lapuerta, [predecessor of the former treasurer in office], of direct contacts with the political manager of the contracting authority ”.

The links found

This piece on bribery reopened in 2017 and has paid off.

The police already consider documented the link between the delivery of money from the Degremont treatment plant company, led by Rafael Palencia, and at least two awards to this company.

"There is an objective, subjective and temporal correlation with a delivery of 35,000 euros registered in the accounting [in b] managed by Bárcenas," the researchers underlined about an operation contract for the Viveros de La Villa treatment plant, awarded by Canal de Isabel II in December 2006. "There is a correlation with a delivery of 60,000 euros registered in Bárcenas' accounting equivalent to 2% of the award amount without VAT", they added about the concession of the drafting of a construction project, set-up, operation, maintenance and exploitation of the Monte Boyal treatment plant (Toledo), awarded by the Public Land Business Entity (Sepes).

The judge also maintains under suspicion, in relation to Degremont, another maintenance and conservation contract for the La Gavia treatment plant, in which Bárcenas would have mediated before the Madrid City Council;

as well as a 2008 file from the public company Canal de Isabel II, dependent on the Community of Madrid and then governed by Aguirre, through which the management of several treatment plants for more than 23 million euros was put out to tender.

According to a court order, Palencia showed interest in this award in a conversation he had in 2008 with Ildefonso de Miguel, then general director of the Channel and a confidant of the later president Ignacio González, who answered his interlocutor after receiving a call from Bárcenas to ask him.

That talk, recorded by De Miguel and intervened during Operation Lezo, is incorporated into the cause.

At the same time, on December 11, Pedraz gave the green light to another line of investigation proposed in this piece by the police.

The judge approved analyzing 23 awards granted by the Government of Aznar, between 2000 and 2004, for almost 600 million euros to Constructora Hispánica, a company headed by Alfonso García Pozuelo, sentenced to two years in prison in the main trial of the

case Gürtel

, known as Época I. This businessman confessed in said oral hearing that he paid Gürtel's leader, Francisco Correa, in exchange for works.

Serving of sentence

Bárcenas is currently in prison for a firm sentence of 29 years for various crimes prosecuted in Period I. But the National High Court has set this Tuesday that the maximum time that he must spend locked up is 12 years, which corresponds to triple the penalty. highest imposed for one of those crimes: in this case, money laundering and against the Public Treasury, both punishable by four years in prison.

The magistrates have also agreed that Rosalía Iglesias, the wife of the former treasurer and sentenced in that oral hearing to almost 13 years, spend a maximum of 7 years and 6 months in jail.