The Court of Accounts has already opened the investigation to try to recover public money embezzled in rigged Adif contracts, as EL MUNDO has been able to confirm from sources familiar with the institution.
The president of the prosecution section, Rebeca Laliga, has launched the process after the position in favor of the Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Auditors. The supervisory institution is thus activated based on a report that it approved last December with findings in which the European Public Prosecutor's Office has also been interested. Agents from the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard went to the headquarters of the Court of Accounts on Friday with "a request for information", according to an official spokesperson for the institution, who recalls the aforementioned report on Adif that this newspaper already reported on December 28.
The evidence focuses on awards to a construction company in the so-called Koldo plot, but the investigation may lead to more fishing grounds after what is becoming known about the internal functioning of Adif after the serious accidents this year.
There are thus two avenues of investigation underway: the Court of Auditors' own confirmed to this newspaper and the judicial one of the European Public Prosecutor's Office.
The investigation is based on orders from OPR, the 'Koldo plot' group
The objective of the Court of Accounts is to quantify the damage to the State of the rigging of Adif awards to construction companies and for those responsible to return the money. The Court of Accounts acts outside of criminal proceedings and its only objective is to recover public money and for embezzlers to respond with the preventive seizure of their assets if necessary. This part of the report in which the counselor of the Court of Auditors, José Manuel Otero Lastres, detected serious irregularities in contracts financed by the European Union during an ordinary audit of Adif.
The document shows how there were already public employees who reported favorable treatment in Adif to a construction company that the judicial investigation has later placed in the plot of the former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos, and his advisor, Koldo García. It will be complex to identify those ultimately responsible for the rigging, especially if the Adif officials who participated in the awards followed orders. In the criminal proceedings, Ábalos is identified as the final responsible party, but any conclusion in the investigation of the Court of Accounts is still premature.
The outgoing president of Adif has denied irregularities
According to the audit document, Adif received two internal complaints in 2022 in its so-called "ethical channel" about "falsification of scores in tenders for works contracts to favor a company", but filed them with "laxity" and "without the required rigor." This is the construction company Public Works and Irrigation (OPR) and the report indicates at least two contracts charged to European funds worth 85 million euros, although it is premature in the initial phase of the Court of Auditors' investigation to identify which awards have been rigged and with what detriment to public coffers compared to competing offers.
The Adif leadership trusts that the case will finally be closed. The former president of Adif, Pedro Marco de la Peña, defended the awards in a letter to the Court of Auditors and denied that there had been any rigging. He relativized that "on April 13, 2023, a request for information from the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) was received in Adif", according to the report from the Court of Auditors, with the argument that the European Public Prosecutor's Office had not opened an investigation, but it already has.
