The Junta justifies the abuse of specific contracts in Andalusia in 2021, questioned by the Intervention | Spain | EUROtoday

The Andalusian Health Service (SAS) made “improper” use of emergency contracting in 2021, in accordance with the audit carried out by the Intervention of this public entity depending on the Ministry of Health throughout that yr. In the doc, the auditing physique reproaches the Government led by Juan Manuel Moreno for abusing a observe that enables direct contracts to be awarded, when the authorized framework that supported it was not in pressure and the influence of the pandemic was “very moderate”. The Board continued to signal any such contract for a worth of as much as 300 million euros, additionally ignoring virtually all the 11 suggestions that the SAS auditors made of their 2020 report, by which they warned of the necessity to keep away from emergency contracts and to observe abnormal procedures every time doable, given the distinctive nature of those contracts.

The audit by the SAS Intervention, carried out by Eldiario.es and whose content material this newspaper has been in a position to seek the advice of, concludes with an “unfavorable” report on the direct awards that had been made all through 2021, after analyzing a pattern of 126 contracting information with an expenditure of 56.6 million euros, of the whole of three,669 associated to works, providers and materials purchases. The Intervention maintains that these emergency contracts and the extensions of these made in 2020 contravene the Public Procurement Law as they aren’t justified. The doc factors out that they’re opposite to Instruction 1/2021 of the Andalusian Ministry of Finance – by which the Ministry of Health was warned that emergency contracting ought to be of a residual nature – and to the Instructions of the State Public Procurement Advisory Board of April 10, 2020, which once more warns of the distinctive nature of those contracts as a result of the legislative framework that supported it, article 16 of Royal Decree Law 7/2000, was repealed.

The Andalusian Government doesn’t appear to be involved about this unfavourable report. “In Andalusia, the contracts have been subject to all the internal and external legality controls of the Chamber of Accounts,” mentioned the spokesperson for the Andalusian Government, Carolina España, who identified that every one the contracting information are revealed. “In 2020 and 2021 the situation was very complicated due to Covid. The important thing was to save lives and that is why emergency contracts were made,” she insisted.

The SAS Intervention questions the “situation of imperative need” skilled in 2021 because of Covid, as argued by the Junta spokesperson, and casts doubt on the emergency nature, arguing that through the second state of alarm the pandemic “was very moderate”. Its report additionally warns that the abuse of any such specific contracts triggered “risk situations” in public spending, since, as they weren’t processed by way of the free competitors process, the situations of aptitude, capability, financial, monetary, technical {and professional} solvency or the prohibitions of contracting with the administration of the profitable bidders couldn’t be verified.

The SAS auditors additionally point out that a few of these awards – within the case of contracts for providers and works – weren’t justified by Covid and warn that a lot of the contracts had been executed after the necessary one-month interval for emergency contracts. They additionally query the management of those contracts by stating that in some “there are no records of positive acceptance of the investment made or it is not duly signed.”

The Court of Auditors considers the Junta's “defective planning”

Sources from Moreno's authorities additionally downplay the significance of this report and emphasize that it’s a pattern of greater than 3,000 contracts and that in no case have there been complaints that the cash was not used as stipulated within the award or that it was diverted to different actions or explicit makes use of. As the spokesperson has identified, these similar sources level to the report of the Chamber of Accounts by which it audits the contracts signed by the Andalusian administration on the event of the pandemic in 2020, whose essential observations, collected as a “qualified opinion” stipulate that the contractual exercise of the Junta through the pandemic “is in accordance, in significant aspects, with the applicable regulations.”

That doc, nonetheless, in its level 15 delimits the time-frame of the audit “in the files formalized in the 2020 financial year. However, taking into account that the de-escalation process was prolonged over time, those events or actions that occurred during 2021 have been analyzed to the extent that it has been deemed necessary for the best fulfillment of the planned objectives”. Sources near the Court of Auditors specify that there could also be particular points relating to 2021, though the majority of the 201 information analyzed give attention to 2020.

In this report, the Court of Auditors notes that the Andalusian Government has “defective planning” in a single out of three specific contracts. It additionally warns that emergency contracts should be made in accordance with the factors of “necessity and proportionality, limiting them in the objective scope as well as in the temporal scope” and asks the Junta to replicate on whether or not the aspirations pursued with this observe may have been achieved with “alternative procedures, less restrictive of competition”.

Permanent management of the expenditure in query

The Intervention doc for 2021 is dated November 23, 2023. Previously, this oversight physique submitted its audit for 2020 by which it included “qualifications”, pointing to deficiencies of the Board when finishing up emergency contracts, and established as much as 11 suggestions, of which, the next yr, just one was fulfilled, in accordance with the 2011 report. The 2020 evaluation was delivered to the SAS on November 9, 2022. All audits are in hindsight as a result of that yr the Moreno Government modified the mechanism for monetary management of prior expenditure for the Ministry of Health, which requires the Intervention reviews to be issued earlier than the contracts are signed, to everlasting monetary management, which determines that they’ve an annual character and are due to this fact carried out subsequently.

This mechanism has simply been prolonged to the remainder of the contracts of your complete Andalusian administration, which has generated criticism from the PSOE, which argues that through the processing of the ERE case, the dearth of management of prior expenditure was one of many essential battering rams of the PP to justify fraud within the administration of those public aids. After studying of the “unfavorable” report of the SAS Intervention, the spokesperson of the Junta and Minister of Economy and Finance has not questioned the suitability of extending the mannequin of steady inspection to the generality of the Junta to ensure better management of expenditure.

The two reviews from the SAS Intervention that query the Junta's specific contracting will not be the one ones. The Andalusian PSOE reported final week that there are a minimum of 9 different audits by this entity on the provincial contracting platforms of the SAS equivalent to 2020 and 2021 that additionally warn of irregularities, together with the fragmentation of contracts to forestall them from being put out to aggressive tender or extensions outdoors the regulation, and which additionally query the dearth of justification for the necessity for the emergency.

The socialists have been warning about these irregularities in contracting for a while and demanded that every one the Junta's specific contracts justified by the pandemic be analyzed in a fee of inquiry in Parliament, which the PP's absolute majority prevented. Sources from the PSOE-A clarify that they’re ready for the conclusions of the 2022 Intervention report, because the Ministry of Health continued to make any such contracts, even supposing the regulatory framework was repealed, throughout 2022 and till November 2023. The Junta has once more resorted this yr to any such direct contracts to unravel the ready lists in public well being for an quantity of 283 million of which 42% will probably be allotted to agreements with out free competitors with personal well being care.