Councilors purged by Vox denounce that they refused to transfer municipal funds to the party

Vox councilors in municipalities of several autonomous communities (Guadalajara, Valencia, Albacete or Orihuela, in Alicante) have denounced that they were pressured to transfer to the central apparatus of the party in Madrid the public subsidies received by their municipal group in exchange for services that they had neither requested nor considered, most of the time, Real. All of them refused to do so and have been purged of the candidacies presented by Vox in Sunday's elections. One of these councilors, the Valencian Vicente Montañez, has presented this Friday a brief in the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office of Valencia in which he asks that these facts be investigated, in case they were constitutive of the crimes of illegal financing of political parties, document falsification, prevarication embezzlement, coercion and criminal organization.

The origin of the events dates back to the autumn of 2020 when, in the middle of the pandemic, a meeting was held between the Vox management and its councilors throughout Spain. The presentations – according to the recording to which EL PAÍS has had access – were made by the then secretary general, Javier Ortega-Smith, but the singing voice was led by Pablo Sáez, national treasurer, and Juan José Aizcorbe, deputy secretary general of management. The two economic leaders went straight to the point. They had some urgency because there were only a few months left in the budget year and they wanted the municipal groups to transfer their funds to the party apparatus.

At the beginning of the legislature, Vox had tried to get its groups in the regional parliaments to directly enter the public funds they receive in bank accounts under the control of Javier Ortega and other leaders of Madrid. Three of the four regional deputies of Vox in Murcia refused and that was the trigger for the rupture of the formation in the only community where it won the general elections of November 2019. The formula was blatantly illegal, as the parliamentary groups are legally responsible for the use of these public subsidies, intended to cover their operating expenses.

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"Last year, with the irruption we had in the institutions, there were things that we had not planned," explained the manager in the telematic meeting. "You already know that in the local regime the legislation has more demanding connotations than in the regional parliaments or in Congress itself on the issue of subsidies," he continued. Precisely, one of the star proposals with which Vox broke into Spanish politics – number 82 of its "100 urgent measures for Spain" – was the suppression of public subsidies to parties, but Aizcorbe excused himself claiming that "it is very difficult for Vox to impose this will on the municipalities." Therefore, he argued, the subsidy could not be waived.

What the treasurer and the manager of Vox reproached their councilors is that, at the end of the previous year, the money that the municipal groups had not spent in their ordinary activity would have returned it to the municipal coffers, "with which in the end neither the political project of Vox nor the citizen has benefited, because it reverts back to the City Council", according to Aizcorbe.

The manager did not explain why the money returned by the municipal groups to their municipalities does not benefit the neighbors, but insisted on regretting that they had not given it to the party; that is, to him to manage it. "It was really a shame because we lost a lot of money, I don't want to say the amount; More than losing, we stopped entering a lot of money," he said. "It was an act of good faith, it was hazing, perhaps. It was an act that in some municipalities and councils reproached us: 'But what are you doing [returning the money not spent]' But we have a clear conscience because this is a non-profit institution."

To prevent this situation from being repeated in successive years, those responsible for Vox urged their councilors to sign agreements between their municipal groups and the national leadership of the party, by which it promised to provide them with a series of services in exchange for being given the municipal subsidy that they did not spend. The proposal raised numerous doubts, so the manager and treasurer of Vox strove to convince the councilors that this formula was fully legal. They were much less clear in detailing what services the party apparatus would provide them, beyond those it was already providing, and only insisted that the municipal groups would have more support from the Vox communication team to publicize their initiatives. Ortega, who was absent during the meeting, returned at the end to encourage the councilors to sign the agreements.

Aizcorbe told the councilors that it was a "synallagmatic contract" — that is, a bilateral agreement with obligations for both parties — which did little to clarify the matter. When, in the following weeks, many Vox councilors received the draft agreement, with a message urging them to return it signed to the party's headquarters, they verified that it was a contract of adhesion: Vox offered its councilors a series of generic services – from the elaboration of arguments to legal and accounting advice or the use of the party's own premises – in exchange for a cash payment. What struck them most is that the payment was fixed and quantifiable, regardless of whether or not such services were provided and the frequency or amount of their use. Although party officials spoke of a quota proportional to the subsidy received by each group – to serve municipalities that did not have such income – in some cases all public aid was claimed.

Not all Vox councilors bowed to this demand. "All the councilors of Spain have been asked [to deliver] that municipal allocation which, as you know, is solely and exclusively of the municipal groups. There are people who have agreed to something that was not legal and others who have not. I have returned [to the City Council] more than 31,000 euros; more than 80% of the municipal allocation. And it is something of which I am very proud, "said the only councilor of Vox in the City of Albacete, Rosario Velasco.

"In Vox they demanded that part of that municipal allocation be allocated to the party. I refused. That's illegal. [That money] should go to the operating expenses [of the municipal group] and never as a party resource or personal remuneration. I am very bad because I put the money for the neighbors before the party, which is what Abascal wanted, "says Antonio de Miguel, spokesman for Vox in the City of Guadalajara.

For his part, Vicente Montañez, councilor in the City of Valencia, has denounced that those responsible for Vox tried to pay with the subsidy of the municipal group an invoice of 8,239 euros corresponding to party expenses. "I am still required to make payments to the party from the account in which we have the allocation of the municipal group when it is already known that it is not possible to make such payments," said the councilor. Also Asunción Aniorte, mayor of Vox in Orihuela, refused to transfer the municipal subsidy to the party in exchange for services that it never received. Aniorte assures that he has not spent a single euro of that allocation and that all the expenses he has incurred as a councilor have been paid out of his pocket. None of the four councilors repeats as a candidate.

In the brief he presented this Friday to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office of Valencia, to which eldiario.es has had access, the mayor Montañez assures that Vox established, "a clear network to embezzle public funds from municipal groups [...] with the use of bad arts aimed at deceiving and extorting" the councilors, whom he threatened that they would not repeat as candidates in the next elections if they did not bow to it.

According to the party's 2021 economic report, Vox received 172,647 euros that year from 31 municipal groups and 803,282 from eight parliamentary groups (among which do not include those of the Congress of Deputies and the Assembly of Madrid) for "collaboration agreements agreed by both parties". Vox maintains that these agreements are in accordance with the Law on the Financing of Political Parties and that their accounts are audited by the Court of Auditors. In Vox's budgets for 2022, the income from these agreements already amounted to 1,014,000 euros.

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