Corruption haunts the government of Miguel Angel Revilla and the PSOE in Cantabria. The Minister of Public Works, Jose Luis Gochicoapresented a few days ago the resignation upon discovery a plot that rigged contracts of the regional highway maintenance service for at least 42 million euros. Revilla accepted the director’s resignation, but delayed until this week. What’s more, the president of Cantabria has organized a dinner this Saturday, yes, each diner paying 10 euros. Revilla’s things.
Two weeks ago, an Investigating Judge ordered the registration of the Ministry of Public Works and the houses and offices of various positions of the business council. The National Police and the Tax Agency had spent a year investigating the irregular award of contracts maintenance and upkeep of roads. The detainees are the head of the Highway Service, Miguel Angel Diezhis wife, their two children (arrested in Madrid) and four people related to the investigated companies.
Police found at the home of the head of the road maintenance service 534,000 euros in cash and a money counting machine. It has also detected you an account in Luxembourg. In total, for now: 42 million euros.
Police suspect they were carrying 10 years rigging public contracts and charging commissions. Revilla, from Regionalist Party of Cantabria, has been president of the region since 2003, except for a legislature in the hands of the PP. From 1995 to 2003 he had already been with the PP Vice President of the Government and adviser, precisely, of Public Works.
Revilla and his adviser have said that they knew nothing of the discovered corruption plot. In an interview in LA TORCHA de OKDIARIO, the PP deputy in the regional parliament and vice-secretary of Organization of the PP of Cantabria, Robert Media, has recalled that «we still remember when Revilla said of Chaves and Griñán that if they did not know about the ERE they had to be fired for being inept and if they did know for being corrupt. Revilla gives advice on television that he does not have.
The PP is struck by the fact that nobody knew anything when “even the president of the businessmen of Cantabria has told that many companies they no longer competed in the contests because now it was heard that the contracts were rigged. But Revilla did not find out ».
Revilla appeared in the parliament of Cantabria and assured that there were no political positions involved despite accepting the resignation of his Transport adviser, “but hours later -says Roberto Media- it has been known that the deputy director general of Public Works, which is a political position, had met with the chief of service and businessmen detained in the very expensive Celler de Can Roca the weekend following 28M. Revilla has had to dismiss him ».
says the leader popular that “Revilla mint more than talks. Revilla and the truth are at odds.” And he gives as an example the mess he got the government delegate in Cantabria into last Friday, Ainhoa QuinonesBy the way, daughter-in-law of the CIS president, Jose Felix Tezanos. Revilla recounted that the Government delegate in Cantabria called him “at twenty past seven in the morning,” she said, “while she was shaving me to tell me that the search operation of the Ministry of Public Works would begin in ten minutes.” The Government delegate denied it and Revilla retracted. Roberto Media says that «Revilla’s inventions are our daily bread. Then he said to justify himself that it is that some days he shaves at some hours and other days at others ». The PP accepts as good the explanations of the Government delegate that, if things were as Revilla said, she would have committed a serious crime.
«Revilla goes to television to represent his character, rather than to be a politician. He is a character who gives recipes to everyone but that he does not apply in Cantabria », says Roberto Media. The leader of the PP points out that Revilla did not know anything about the trains that did not fit through the tunnels: “It was known that these trains -because they were notified by the ministry- did not fit through the tunnels but nobody, not even Revilla, found out anything”.
Revilla cheats
For Roberto Media, «all this is a joke in Cantabria. It seems like a joke and a tease.” And he laments: «Revilla has to give many explanations. Here in Cantabria there is no control of public money.
And the popular leader tells the case of uin the zinc mines which, coincidentally, Revilla announced on television and in the regional press that he was going to revitalize just before the 2019 elections and that, a few days ago, he recognized that he had to leave because – Revilla said – “a bad calculation was made” . Like the trains.
“Just before the 2019 elections, in the Besaya region, which is heavily affected by unemployment – says Roberto Media – Revilla announced a multimillion-dollar investment of 600 million euros and 2,000 direct jobs to operate some zinc mines that had already been abandoned by another company because they were not profitable. Revilla assured that this time they were going to be and that Cantabria was going to be European California, the largest mine in the world and that Cantabria was going to produce 10 times more than what is produced in all of Spain.
In the regional press, Revilla can be seen around those pre-election dates of 2019 with his helmet on and taking photos and videos announcing the survey work on the land. “Every day -says Roberto Media- one of the businessmen who were going to work there was brought to announce it in all the regional press. But the months and years passed and it turned out that the company that should have done 126 tests to see if there was zinc only did five and left. The second, which should have invested 56 million euros for polls, disappeared without doing a single one. The third should have invested four million euros in four polls and nothing has been done. And the rest of the companies that had the concessions have been waiting for the permits for 48 months.
For Roberto Media, that failed zinc mine represents the “character’s” way of governing: “Revilla took advantage of an electoral tale by playing with the illusions of the residents of that region and of all of Cantabria and in the end everything has been a fiasco and they have abandoned the project.
Now, together with his vice president of the PSOE, Pablo Zuloaga, he faces a pufo of at least 42 million euros of rigged public contracts.
