The Government of the PP archived the 'Cuarteles case' despite the fact that a second report confirmed irregularities

The then Minister of the Interior, Juan Ignacio Zoido, greets the civil guards deployed in Catalonia during the 2017 independence challenge.Juan Carlos Hidalgo (EFE)

José Manuel Holgado Merino, general director of the Civil Guard during the period of Juan Ignacio Zoido (PP) as Minister of the Interior in the last Government of Mariano Rajoy, ordered in writing on December 27, 2017 that the Internal Affairs Service stop investigate the alleged irregular awarding of dozens of works by the armed institute to the Canarian builder Ángel Ramón Tejera de León,

, one of the defendants in the

of corruption together with Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jarava.

Holgado gave the order despite the fact that a report commissioned to the Head of Economic Affairs had confirmed the suspicions of Internal Affairs that there were alleged irregularities in those tenders, according to documents incorporated into the summary to which EL PAÍS has had access.

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In the brief ordering the file, Holgado, a career judge, indicated that, after various internal checks on the facts that Internal Affairs included in a "draft report" that he had proposed taking to the Prosecutor's Office, "it is concluded that there is no there are […] intentional or reckless actions and omissions punishable by law, nor conduct contrary to professional ethics in which personnel assigned to the General Directorate of the Corps have been involved.”

In the order, the highest political officer of the armed institute used to justify his decision three studies carried out by different bodies of the Civil Guard on the content of that draft.

Among them he cited a report from the Headquarters for Economic Affairs that, in reality,

Order of the then General Director of the Civil Guard, José Manuel Hidalgo, ordering in December 2017 the cessation of the investigation into irregularities in works and that has been incorporated into the 'Cuarteles case'.

Specifically, this document detailed alleged anomalies in the awarding of nine headquarters to companies from Tejera de León in the 2015-2017 period.

Among them, those carried out in barracks in the province of Ávila, the focus where the investigation that has led to the current legal case in which the businessman and high command of the armed institute, now retired, is accused, would start a year later.

The document is dated August 31, 2017 and consists of 24 pages and 29 annexes in which more than 270 invoices, estimates and emails of those works are accumulated.

It is signed by two intervening lieutenant colonels.

In the "conclusions and recommendations" chapter, the report indicates that, in a large part of the tender files examined, there is no mandatory report "or other similar document" that justifies the expense.

The judicial investigation has now revealed that the builder received orders for work that had not even been requested by those responsible for the barracks where they were carried out.

In addition, the Internal Affairs document details that, although in general in all the awards budgets were requested from three companies to carry out a "market survey", in the end this requirement was "tainted by the fact that the companies or businessmen who concur are controlled by the same people”.

Cover of the August 2017 report confirming the alleged irregularities previously detected by Internal Affairs.

The auditors, who described this circumstance as "anomalous and quite reiterated", highlighted that the four beneficiary companies (Angrasurcor, Solocorcho, Canarycork and Impermekork) "have the same people as administrators and proxies", in reference to Tejera de León.

The fifth bidder was an employee of the Canarian businessman himself.

And they added a detail: "Even the formats of documents presented [by these companies] when they compete for tenders are practically identical."

These companies finally got close to 50% of the amounts of the works analyzed in the report.

The report also warned that the Tejera de León companies did not have "personnel or specific infrastructure for the development of the construction, repair and conservation works" that were awarded to them.

In this sense, he highlighted that on occasions he had been forced to subcontract to other companies.

The current judicial investigation has verified that the builder won the tender to demolish the Garachico barracks, on the island of Tenerife, for 168,524 euros.

However, the jobs were never done by workers from his companies, but by two companies on the island, to which he paid 62,000 euros.

Tejera de León pocketed a profit of more than 100,000 euros.

Asuntos Económicos also focused on the "remoteness of the registered office of the companies with respect to a large part of the place of execution of the works", given that most of the companies in Tejera de León had their headquarters in the Canary Islands, despite which Competitions were awarded to him to make small repairs in barracks throughout the Peninsula.

The document indicated that in three command posts - those of A Coruña, Badajoz and Castellón - the offer to hire these companies "had been managed from central bodies" of the General Directorate of the Civil Guard itself, without further specification.

The current judicial investigation has confirmed that it was General Vázquez Jarava himself who presumably told those responsible for the command posts that they had to hire the builder.

Despite all this, the former director general referred to this document in his order as one of the three that had led to his decision to archive the Internal Affairs investigation.

The other two were one prepared by the Headquarters of Support Services-Basketing Service to verify "the quality of the work" carried out by the Tejera de León companies and the report prepared by Vázquez Jarava himself, who was then in charge of the General Support Subdirectorate, one of the most powerful positions within the Civil Guard when managing its financial and patrimonial resources.

In this, the high command concluded that "in the actions reported [in the Internal Affairs documents] there is no indication of a crime."

As now detailed reports incorporated into the

, by then the general had already allegedly received gifts from the businessman in the form of trips to see the Champions League finals in Milan and Cardiff (United Kingdom) and hotel stays for him and his family.

Letter signed by Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jarava in January 2018 informing Internal Affairs of the decision of the then General Director of the Civil Guard, José Manuel Holgado, to archive the investigations into the alleged irregularities in the awarding of works.

With all this, Holgado ordered at the end of December of that year "the filing of the file initiated by the Internal Affairs Service" and "the cessation of the proceedings" considering that "new evidence on which to base this decision" was not necessary ”, according to the document.

Eight days after the order, on January 4, 2018, Vázquez Jaraba himself sent a letter to the colonel in charge of Internal Affairs with a copy of the document signed by Holgado "for the knowledge and proof of that unit."

In the letter, the general indicated to the other high command that the highest political officer of the Civil Guard had ordered "the filing of the file" on the awards to the builder and, therefore, that it was not going to be sent to the Prosecutor's Office.

The order shows the handwritten receipt from the colonel of the unit.

eleven days later,

Now, more than five years later, the alleged irregularities denounced are being investigated by a court in Madrid, which maintains four people as defendants for the alleged irregularities in the awarding of 193 works in barracks of 13 command posts (four more than those revealed in that document) for a value greater than 3 million euros.

Among the defendants are Tejera de León and Vázquez Jarava, the latter accused of the crimes of influence peddling, administrative prevarication, bribery, documentary falsification and embezzlement.

There is a second high command of the Civil Guard accused and Internal Affairs has asked the judge instructing the case to take a statement as investigated from other officials of the armed institute and an architect, although the magistrate has refused to summon them for the moment.

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