Congress to establish pandemic fraud investigation commission

Spain’s Congress will today establish the investigation commission on emergency contracts in the pandemic, which was promoted by the PSOE after the so-called ‘Koldo case’ broke out and which was agreed to be created in the last Plenary Session.

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However, the objectives of the different groups intersect, since while the socialists want to examine communities governed by the PP, especially that of Madrid. The PP are targeting high-ranking PSOE officials, and Junts wants to take the opportunity to pillory the PSC candidate for the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, who was Minister of Health in those months.

It was at the end of February, after information about the plot for which Koldo García Izaguirre, advisor to the then socialist minister José Luis Ábalos, was arrested, when the PSOE registered this commission, which was approved by the Plenary of Congress last Thursday, but without support from the PP, which opted to abstain, or from Vox, which voted against.

With it, the socialists intend to examine for four months the Covid material contracts of the General State Administration, including those in the Koldo case, but also to review the contracting procedures of other public administrations “in order to “study and evaluate possible modifications of state legislation on public procurement to prevent irregularities from appearing in the future.”

And it is in that section of “other administrations” that the PSOE intend to take the opportunity to summon regional presidents of the PP, such as Isabel Díaz Ayuso from Madrid, whose partner is being investigated for the alleged crimes of tax fraud and document falsification.

On the other hand, what the PP wants is to demand explanations from socialist leaders who once contracted with the plot, such as the current president of the Congress, Francina Armengol, and the Minister of Territorial Policy, Angel Víctor Torres. For its part, Junts wants to call Salvador Illa, then Minister of Health and now socialist candidate for the Generalitat, since he holds him responsible for this corruption for not knowing about it or for consenting to it.

For the work plans and the similar appearances to go ahead, the PSOE will need the support of all the partners, who can ‘sneak’ appearances with the vote of the PP and Vox and without the consent of the socialists.

As stated in the investigation commission’s letter, the PP and the PSOE will have three members each, Vox and Sumar two per head, and the other groups will have a single representative.

The PSOE has elected two members of the Finance Commission, the president, Alejandro Soler Mur, and the socialist spokesperson, Juan Antonio González Gracia, and the third place has been reserved for Mercedes González, who was a councillor and Government delegate in Madrid, where he was involved in several political confrontations with both the mayor, José Luis Martínez Almeida, and the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

For its part, the PP has chosen its leader Elías Bendodo as spokesperson, who will be accompanied by Macarena Montesinos, general secretary of the PP Group, and by José Vicente Marí, spokesperson for the Finance Commission. And Vox has named two of its deputies most critical of the PSOE, the Valencian Carlos Flores, spokesperson in the Constitutional and Foreign Commission; and Jorge Campos from the Balearic Islands, spokesperson for Territorial Policy and Cooperation.

PSOE AND SUMAR, MAJORITY ON THE BOARD

In next week’s constitutive session, the Presidency and the rest of the positions on the Board will be elected (two Vice-Presidencies and two Secretaries). PSOE and Sumar aspire to the majority, with three seats compared to two for the PP, which is the usual scheme for parliamentary commissions. The Socialists also aspire for one of their three representatives to occupy the Presidency, which requires the support of the rest of the Government’s parliamentary allies.

And once the commission is established, a period will open to approve a work plan and propose appearances, which will only go ahead if there is a majority behind it.

Congress already has three other investigative commissions established, which the PSOE agreed with Junts and ERC in exchange for the vote of the independentistas to gain the majority in the Congress Board. They refer to the jihadist attacks committed in Catalonia in 2017, the espionage of pro-independence politicians with the Pegasus program, and the so-called ‘operation Catalonia’ to discredit political adversaries from the Ministry of the Interior of the first Government of Mariano Rajoy.

None of these commissions have been able to get started, they are in the phase of agreeing on the work plan and approving appearances, but everything indicates that the parade of appearances of these Catalan commissions and the new one on contracts will coincide in the middle of the electoral cycle with elections Basques on April 21, Catalans on May 12, and the Europeans on June 9.

Until this legislature, the parliamentary groups of Congress always argued that it was not possible to have so many investigative commissions working at the same time, especially because the small formations did not have enough deputies to attend to all the tasks.

In 2020, it was the PP that asked to create a Joint Commission (Congress-Senate) to investigate hiring in the months of the pandemic, but then the PSOE and its allies rejected it. What was created was a study commission to approve recommendations for “reconstruction” after the pandemic.

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