The Nationalist Group (CC-PNC) in the Cabildo of Lanzarote has denounced "the systematic lifting of legality objections by the island's president, María Dolores Corujo, under the pretext of Covid19, for all expenses motivated by the pandemic."
The nationalists, who also denounce "the diversion of expenses towards autonomous entities in an attempt to escape the direct control of the Intervention", have requested, on the other hand, a list of the minor contracts signed in 2020 in view of the increase that these have experienced.
"After ten months of pandemic, and although it is protected that until the end of the first state of alarm certain urgent expenses were made that were subject to either a report of disagreement or a legality objection by the Intervention, when it comes to auditing the expenses incurred, what is not acceptable is that, once this ended on June 21, large expenses continue to be made without tendering the provision of services linked to the needs derived from the pandemic, ignoring the guidelines of the General Directorate of Heritage and Contracting of the Government of the Canary Islands, which concludes by saying that once the emergency situation disappears or is attenuated, the services necessary to continue with the incidents of the virus must be contracted in accordance with the procedures", says the CC spokesperson in the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés.
The nationalists affirm that, "since the pandemic began and to date, practically all the disinfection, cleaning, catering or security expenses that the Cabildo has assumed in the different devices and services enabled, have been subject to legality objection and, in other cases, a report of disagreement, so they have had to be subject to either a lifting of objection by the president, or validated the invoices as the case may be."
“From the data we have, it appears that only until the month of September (there was no state of alarm from July to September) and we are already finishing January, there are a dozen invoices that exceed 700,000 euros spent in this irregular way. Seven months after the end of the state of alarm that covered the emergency, they continue to skip the procedures established in the Public Sector Contract Law, as the Intervention reports say that there is no record of the initiation of a contracting file that covers the continuity of the services, once the emergency has been resolved”, says the nationalist councilor Samuel Martín.
Likewise, he points out that although a new state of alarm was decreed in October, which is still in force, "this does not cover contracting by emergency as the first one did."
"Total secrecy and lack of response"
On the other hand, the Nationalist Group denounces the "total secrecy and lack of response" of the Cabildo Government "to the requests for information about expenses of a similar nature that the executive, fleeing from the direct supervision of the Intervention, has diverted to the entities that depend on the institution."
"Such is the case of the contract of the three economists hired by the Tourism Promotion Society, which the president still does not give us after showing it in plenary and publicly committing to deliver it at its end, or a decree of the Presidency for the purchase of 100,000 masks for more than 300,000 euros (3 euros per unit), which inexplicably has not been annulled or executed and ended up being entrusted to the Emergency Consortium, to which more than 1,000,000 euros have been diverted, given the safe objections of the Cabildo Intervention, without the Consortium having yet responded to the request for information required in this regard since December 29", they maintain.
Coalición Canaria congratulates and recognizes "the magnificent work that the entire human team of the Emergency Consortium has been doing and continues to do before and during the pandemic" and clarifies that "it is not at all about questioning their work but quite the opposite" "What generates doubts and we demand, is the right to clear up whether the contracting procedures have not been adjusted to the norm there either, what the money has been spent on and, if so, whether or not they have also been subject to objection as occurs with practically all Covid expenses in the Cabildo”, they point out.
For all this, the Nationalist Group urges the government group "to regularize this situation as soon as possible, in addition to facilitating once and for all the opposition the information to which it is entitled in its exercise of supervising the action of the government."
