Carmen Gómez, former PP Councillor for Contracting, Parks, Gardens, and Urban Sanitation in Torrevieja City Council, has been sentenced to seven years’ disqualification from public employment or office for malfeasance in the awarding of services for the Mediterranean VIII Employment Workshop, which is part of the construction of the La Siesta-Chaparral garden.
In the verdict, the court also ordered the previous director of the workshop to be barred from office for three years and six months as a necessary accomplice in the same crime. It also required each of them to pay half of the court fees.
The Prosecutor’s Office sought an eleven-year disqualification term, but the court applied the modest mitigating factor of unreasonable delay to both. The former workshop director was given a reduced sentence because he was a required cooperator. The sentence is not final; an appeal can be made with the TSJCV.
The court ruling indicates that the park’s construction work was funded through mixed financing, with Servef, the former name of the Valencian Employment and Training Service and now Labora, providing a maximum global subsidy of €362,642.40 and unsubsidised contributions of €1,129,800.96, for a total cost of €1,492,443.36.
It is said that a project was to be done to secure the Servef grant, “but no project for the execution of the works was available,” and the workshop began on December 31, 2014.
According to the facts, a meeting was held at the park’s construction site in December 2014, attended by Gómez and the former director of the workshop. The then-councilwoman verbally explained “the procedure for requesting the works and services, knowing it was illegal” and “the arbitrary nature of her actions, as she lacked jurisdiction” over the employment workshop, and there was no project for the execution of the works or contracting file.
As a result, the court emphasises that the now-convicted individuals “unilaterally, knowing the illegality of their actions, decided which companies would supply materials or participate” during the execution of the workshop, and that they placed orders “based on the needs and demand for materials at the time, conducting negotiations and orders verbally and by telephone.”
The court also recognises the splitting of minor contracts as “a classic case of prevarication when used to circumvent legal controls” and a “common means of achieving direct award.”
“In this fashion, in 2015, they began to partition the scope of the services, separating the price of these services into various bills provided by supplier companies. The amounts sometimes approached 18,000 or 15,000 euros per year, minus VAT, independent of the functional unit, allowing them to be awarded straight as a minor service contract,” according to the court.
Furthermore, the court has emphasised that the former Popular Party councillor gave “verbal orders to carry out contracts with previously selected companies, which individually could be the subject of minor contracts, if it were not” because they were part of the La Siesta-Chaparral garden construction project, “which requires publicity and competition requirements,” which “makes it impossible” for a councillor to order direct contracts with companies.
Furthermore, it emphasises that ” arbitrariness is evident” in the awarding of these services and that “the action entailed the exclusion of the principles of transparency, publicity, and free competition in public procurement.”
According to the ruling, both parties “knowingly and radically violated the principles underlying public sector procurement legislation regarding freedom of access to tenders, publicity and transparency, non-discrimination, and equal treatment of all citizens, thereby limiting the possibility of achieving efficient use of public funds, safeguarding free competition, and selecting the most economically advantageous tender.
Moreover, it is argued that “in the long sequence of actions, there was much more than just the occasional failure to comply with some of the legal requirements in force in the matter, since they acted with disregard for all of them, contracting with a highly personal and opaque criterion where the legal system imposed the maximum objectivity and transparency.”
In summary, the Administration’s conduct has violated the constitutional standards. The defendants chose companies to do the work without following the necessary steps, ignoring the rules for fairness and openness, which goes against the principles that should guide public sector contracts.
Author: Derek Appleton
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