The judge investigating the Barracks case is considering dividing the investigation so that the alleged illegalities in the barracks reforms in the Canary Islands are specifically investigated by a court on the islands. The Madrid magistrate would maintain the rest of the investigation into the works awarded in the Peninsula to the businessman linked to the plot Mediator Ángel Ramón Tejera de León, Mon.
According to sources of the investigation, the reason for dividing the case is that there are substantial differences between what happened in the Tenerife headquarters compared to the rest of Spain. In the Peninsula, the alleged irregularities began and ceased coinciding with the arrival of Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jarava in command of the General Support Subdirectorate. When he left the post, the awards to the businessman “stopped dead,” according to sources in the investigation.
On the other hand, the contracts obtained by Mon in Tenerife continued, in this case coinciding with the presence of José María Tienda Serrano at the head of that command. Store was dismissed last week and the central services of the Civil Guard took control of the accounts. Irregularities in 40 works in the area that Tienda handed over to Mon are being investigated.
Vázquez Jarava was appointed to the position that gave him access to funds for the works in the barracks took place in September 2015. He remained in the position until his retirement in January 2018. One year before his departure, in April In 2017, the Internal Affairs Service of the Civil Guard submitted a report to the Deputy Director of Operations under the name “prosecutor’s report draft”. It detailed the increase in contracts awarded to Mon in various units of the Civil Guard.
One of the copies was sent to Vázquez Jarava, who a month later concluded: “Because it is understood that in the reported actions or there is evidence of a crime, it is not necessary to transfer the report of the Internal Affairs Service to the Prosecutor’s Office.” Six months later, José Manuel Holgado, director of the Civil Guard with the popular Juan Ignacio Zoido as Minister of the Interior, ordered the file of the Internal Affairs file and “the cessation of the proceedings.”
Six months later, an anonymous letter arrives at the Secretary of State for Security reporting the irregularities at the Ávila headquarters. The complaint is sent to Internal Affairs and represents the germ of the barracks case. It starts in Ávila, but extends to 13 command posts and points to the responsibility of Vázquez Jarava, so the case ends up being referred to a court in Madrid.
From what has been investigated so far, it can be deduced that not only the investigated commanders ensured that Mon was the chosen businessman -instead of businessmen from the area, as usual-, but that the jobs were sometimes not carried out, or only partially, or were invoiced above the market price.
In total, the works reviewed by the researchers exceed three million euros. The money was paid by each headquarters after the Jarava department released the funds, which could thus be used for awards to the Canarian businessman. In some cases, Jarava imposed the execution of works that had not even been claimed by those barracks.
The investigation is waiting for National Heritage to designate the expert that the judge had been demanding from the Ministry of the Interior for a year. According to sources of the investigation, if the case is divided as planned, it will be easier to deal with the huge number of revisions of works in the barracks that are still pending.
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