The political course kicks off in Galicia with the focus on the contracts awarded by the Xunta that have benefited companies related to Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s family for 15 years. The Galician Parliament will debate a request from the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG) on Tuesday to create an investigation committee on the million-dollar contracts awarded without competition to two companies where the leader of the PP’s sister and brother-in-law hold executive positions: Eulen, where Micaela Núñez Feijóo is a delegate in Galicia, and Universal Support, with Ignacio Cárdenas Botas, brother of Feijóo’s partner, as commercial director. It is expected that the PP led by Alfonso Rueda will use its absolute majority to block this initiative. The Conselleiro de Presidencia de la Xunta, Diego Calvo, defended in an interview on Cadena SER that there is “absolutely nothing proven in these contracts and explanations have been given”. According to him, the requests from both the BNG and the PSdeG-PSOE are the only way to escape the “ethically condemnable” actions of Begoña Gómez, the wife of Socialist President Pedro Sánchez.
Criticism of the volume of contracts received by Eulen from the Galician government dates back over a decade, but has gained strength again since Feijóo became PP president. With the pandemic, opposition suspicions have also extended to other companies, including one where his partner’s brother works. According to the petition registered by the BNG in the regional chamber, an investigation by El Salto revealed that the Xunta awarded Eulen 1,311 minor contracts between 2018 and 2023 worth 4.8 million euros. The nationalists add that during this period, the total amount of contracts with this company exceeds 55 million and in the last two years with Alfonso Rueda as president, the company received over 17 million in contracts, information uncovered by Público. The Ana Pontón’s party has demanded an independent audit of these records because, in their opinion, Eulen has been “clearly” favored since Feijóo took office, “especially during Alfonso Rueda’s tenure, when the pace and amount of contracts with this company increased”.
The BNG also focuses on the contracts received during the pandemic by Universal Support, where Feijóo’s partner’s brother, Ignacio Cárdenas Botas, serves as a director. Between May 2020 and October 2021, the company, with Ignacio Cárdenas Botas as commercial director for Galicia, benefited from Xunta contracts worth 19.2 million euros, “handed out contracts”. During this time, in just the bills for the covid contact tracing service, the regional government paid 10.9 million (7.8 between January and October 2021) “consecutively and on a platter”, highlight the nationalists. The Xunta even awarded a 4 million contract to this company “despite being the most expensive offer of all”. The contract was for a call center service for telephone information on covid. The PSdeG-PSOE has already formally requested in the Galician Parliament the complete records of contracts signed between 2018 and 2024 by the Galician government with Eulen and Universal Support. The Socialists want to shed light on possible conflicts of interest and favoritism. The José Ramón Gómez Besteiro’s party alleges that since Feijóo took office as president of the Xunta in May 2009, this company received an average annual value of 2.86 million contracts from his government.
The request for an investigation committee to be debated on Tuesday in the Galician Parliament includes other pandemic contracts that the BNG considers suspicious. The nationalists want to investigate the awards for mask supply to Sibucu 360, unrelated to the health sector and, according to the BNG, linked to a businessman convicted of fraud and falsehood: José Ramón García, former CEO of Blusens. With four employees, Sibucu 360 went from billing 765,000 euros in 2019 to over 31 million in 2020, “multiplying their profits by ten in just one year”. The BNG has detected discrepancies in the official documents on these contracts and an alert from the Xunta’s Galician Consumer Institute because some face masks had false certificates. The sanctioning process resulted in a fine of only 600 euros, and did not prevent the company from continuing to receive orders from the regional government. The other company mentioned by the opposition to Rueda is Mape Asesores, a Pontevedra-based company in which the partner of the Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso intermediated before receiving a million commission for the sale of health material at the height of the pandemic. Mape Asesores received 12 contracts from the Xunta for over 10.4 million between April and July 2020 and, according to the Consello de Contas, the Galician supervisory body, the Galician government paid overpriced for the goods supplied by this company. Pontón’s party argues that they have repeatedly requested details of all these operations from Rueda’s government for which they request a parliamentary commission. “It is clear that transparency is not the main virtue” of the PP government, criticize the nationalists, who see an “obvious” interest in “hiding documentation”.
