A judge investigates Pedro Antonio Sánchez for a fraud of half a million in a women’s center

Source: The Truth
The prosecutor, who promotes the complaint, appreciates continued crimes of prevarication, malfeasance and falsehood, among others
They took a grant of 192,000 euros to raise what was called ‘Child Care Center (0 to 3 years) for the Reconciliation of Work and Family Life’; on the other hand, the General Directorate of Family approved an amount of 473,000 euros for another different project, called -curiously, in a very similar way to the first- ‘Child Care Center (0 to 3 years)’.

The Consistory would have received subsidies to build a center of conciliation and a center of the childhood and only would have raised one, camouflaging the other inside the first one; the aid granted to one of the projects had an «unknown» destination

The works of both agencies, located on the same site, formally began on the same day, on April 17, 2007, although the prosecution maintains that in reality what «tried to hide» is that it was «the same work» . And all this because, supposedly, the money from the subsidies provided for the first of the buildings would have been used for different and unknown purposes.

«Those responsible for the City Council, in order to hide that the amount of the subsidy received for the construction and equipment of the Conciliation Center -the one promoted from Work- had been dedicated to other different purposes, certifications were invented that did not correspond to the realization of any work «, is indicated textually in the complaint that now investigates a court of Lorca. In this way, when the finished work of the aforementioned Conciliation Center was received on June 27, 2007, «it is evident that this act did not correspond to reality, since the Conciliation Center, as an independent building, never existed and is unknown. the destination of the subsidies ».

They made a ‘one for two’
As proof that the works of a building were used to camouflage the other project, the Public Ministry reports that according to the work certifications this second building «lacks foundations, structure and cover.» This would be impossible and, in reality, would only show that the investment in a project was being used to conceal the alleged disappearance of the funds destined for the other.

In order to conceal this anomalous situation and to avoid the controls of the central and regional administrations, the Consistory would have counted on the supposed involvement of the municipal architect, Caridad García, and of the interventionist, Inmaculada García – also denounced – and those responsible for the the winning bidder for the works, Construcciones Urdecón, whose legal representative, Venancio A. Galán, is also at the center of the investigation.

«When the money for subsidies for the Center of Conciliation disappeared, that is, 192,670 euros, it was ‘built’ with the money from the subsidies of the Child Care Center,» sums up the prosecutor. «They were always the same building, which is what the people in charge of the Municipality of Puerto Lumbreras have tried to hide».

Another apparently irregular circumstance that occurred in this process consisted in the approval of a modified project, in September 2008, whereby the budget for the Child Care Center doubled, going from the initially planned 473,000 euros to the 925,000 The increase of the items was unjustifiable, in the opinion of the public prosecutor, since without increasing the constructed surface the costs of the coatings were increased up to 100%, in 57,000 euros the carpentry – «in the original project there were no doors or windows? «, complains the complainant- and in 62,000 euros the enclosures and partition walls.

With this, apparently, they wanted to hide that the project had run out of funds, for once unknown reasons, despite the fact that at that time there must still be more than 223,000 to invest. The warnings that were made from the Technical Assistance Service to Municipalities of the Autonomous Community, in the sense that the modification represented an increase of 95.5% and that this implied a «substantial alteration» of the contract and was grounds for resolution of the same, they were not taken care of.

Then, a Women’s Center
The alleged irregularities did not remain there, which would also have extended to the construction of a Women’s Center in the same area, this time with a subsidy of 155,000 euros granted by the Institute for Women in December 2006. Well, in June 2008, when only 15,444 euros had been spent on the work, the drafting of a modified project «which involved double the price – in fact, increased by 123% – was justified in an unjustified manner», until a surcharge was approved. 237,000 euros. And, once again, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, the money from the subsidy «had been used for other purposes», also unknown.

In case

All this was not enough, in December 2008 another subsidy was reclaimed, this time of 38,824 euros, for ‘Remodeling and conditioning of the Women’s Center’. And in June 2009 the Women’s Institute returned to wage a new grant, this time for 400,000 euros, for the ‘Construction and Equipment of the Women’s Center’.

The circumstance occurs that all the works were successively awarded to the Urdecón firm, in processes allegedly pregnant with irregularities.

An expert report, made by a specialist of the College of Architects, highlights that the Center for Child Care and the Women’s Center cost Murcia citizens 1,924,290 euros, when the real cost should not have exceeded the 1,425,180 euros. «This means that the City Council of Puerto Lumbreras would have paid unduly or for other uses a total of 499,110 euros; that is, 25.93% of the total cost of the works ».

These facts reported in the complaint would be constitutive, in the opinion of the Public Ministry, of ongoing crimes of prevarication -both in the adjudication of works and modified projects-, continued misappropriation of public funds, fraud of subsidies and continued documentary falsification