The Community of Madrid sent in April to the judge investigating a possible crime of administrative prevarication in the FP case a set of audits that explain that “irregularities with possible criminal significance” would have occurred in the works of five educational centers: the Institutes Virgen de la Paloma; Prince Felipe, Luis Buñuel and Jorge Guillén and the Integral Center of Distance FP Ignacio Ellacuría. In all of them, the regional administration concludes, reforms were made through lower contracts that regional officials take fictitious and allegedly allowed to avoid public tender and be able to select contractors by finger. This is stated in documentation that the country has accessed, and that it has led the case instructor to request that the Madrid government send the same analysis of seven other educational centers, for a total of 12. In this way, the case takes speed: in June it will declare the investigated.
During his investigation, the Prosecutor’s Office already saw “a clearly irregular and allegedly criminal administrative action” in the “rude and palmaria omission of the procedure” applied by the regional government to reform educational centers in 2021, 2022 and 2023: the payment through minor contracts – which cannot exceed 40,000 euros, more iva having gone to public tender – which would allow competition between companies, as the legislation sends.
The judge, meanwhile, already warned in November “.” And now the audits sent to the Court by the Administration itself, at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, agree to indicate the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. At the time investigated, Enrique Ossorio, current president of the Assembly, was the counselor in command of this area, and Rocío Albert, the current head of Economics, Finance and Employment, exercised as a vicecase.
“Expenses processed as minor contracts that exceed the amount of the minor contract have been detected,” reads the documentation consulted by this newspaper. “Likewise, fractionation of the object of the contract has been observed (…) in order not to exceed the limits established for the minor contract (…) and avoid the contracting procedure with applicable tender,” it is added.
“Taking into account the object and amount of these expenses, the processing of the contracting file by the competent body of the Ministry would have proceeded,” is explicit. “The center lacks competence to authorize these expenses, which would correspond to the Ministry,” it is underlined. “It is meaning about its effect on the management of the center that from the Ministry of amounts are entered to finance extraordinary expenses, when the educational centers only have competence to make repositions, not new investments, and expenses limited to the minor contract,” is aimed at. And he shaves: “The corresponding file has not been processed by the Ministry, despite being aware of the expenses to undertake.”
Three blocks
the Prosecutor’s Office closed 2024 with the works of a dozen centers in La Diana. He divided them into three blocks. The first affected that of the original complaint, promoted by the Community of Madrid itself, on the Educational Ciudad School Educational Center of San Fernando, which includes the Hotel School and School City Institutes. “The general intervention of the Community of Madrid has already issued reporting the irregularities”, is indicated in documentation of the case on some works by which the Varelec Group budgeted 2,417,720.5 euros, and charged 1,281,392.87, according to the regional intervention, and that would have been commissioned “verbally formalization ”.
The second block comprised centers in which regional intervention also claims to have detected irregularities. This is the Antonio Machado Institute, the Professional Conservatory of Music of Alcalá de Henares and the Alberto Heart School of Art, “with payments allegedly carried out with the same mechanics, and without the contracting and fractionation process of contracts, for a joint amount of 1,013,152.94 euros, with the same beneficiary in the Varelec environment”.
This block also included the Institutes Virgen de la Paloma, Prince Felipe, Tetuán de las Victorias and city of the poets “with payments per total amount of 904,801.35 euros, apparently also to societies and people linked to Varelec; provisional figure.”
The third block is the least worked when the report was issued, in October, because the intervention had not even pronounced. They are the School of Languages and the Territorial Center for Innovation and South Training; and the institutes Carlos Bousoño and Pío Baroja.
Months later, the investigation has grown. First, because the judge has received the audits corresponding to the Virgen de la Paloma Institute, Prince Felipe, to the integral Xentral of Distance Vocational Training Ignacio Ellacuría; to the Luis Buñuel Institute; and to the Jorge Guillén Institute. And second, because he has requested the audits corresponding to the Art School, the OI School, to the Territorial Center for Innovation and Training Madrid-South; to the Carlos Bousoño Institute; to Pío Baroja; to the Tetuán de la Victoria and the city of the poets.
In this way, the centers that have already attracted the interest of the researchers reach the fortnight, when the cause began with the complaint of what happened in only one of them. In this regard, two knowledgeable sources of the operation to reform these centers have been warning that the minor contract system has been used for years in multiple educational resources in the region, since it was an “institutionalized practice”.
