"I am not saying that it is corruption. I have suspicions, but no proof. So I am not going to say it that way. But what cannot be denied is that, as many things happen as they happen to him, at least we cannot attribute it to botch work ... and some botch jobs have a high probability of getting involved." This is how strong the first plenary session of the year began in the Madrid City Council, in which the opposition has once again placed the mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, under the spotlight for alleged favors from the municipal corporation to "pressure groups". and his "friends" against the "self-employed and citizens".
It has been the councilor for Más Madrid Miguel Montejo who has spread suspicion in Cibeles during his speech at an appearance by Almeida "to explain the reasons that lead the City Council to give preferential and differentiated treatment to large companies compared to citizens, self-employed and SMEs in terms of hiring, mobility and payment of taxes". "They can be botch jobs, corruption or misunderstandings, but what there is not is an idea of the city," the mayor of Más Madrid added.
Some considerations that Vox has seconded by making ugly that "more than 54% of the contracting has been done only to 10 successful bidders" preventing the self-employed, SMEs and small companies from participating in the "big cake".
Montejo refers to the award by the Madrid City Council of two contracts in less than three months to joint ventures formed by Subterra, an engineering company in which the brother of the Mobility delegate, Borja Carabante, works.
The first of them, as revealed by Eldiario.es, took place in August 2020 to "design the burial of the A-5". And the second took place in November of the same year and "was focused on technical assistance for the supervision of Calle 30 projects", according to the award documents to which Somos Madrid has had access.
In the case of the burial, and just one day after processing it, the mayor "annulled his decision and asked the mayor by letter to abstain in a process that the council has kept secret." All this without alleging a single reason to do so until, seven days later, "the mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, decreed that he accepted a request for abstention from Borja Carabante in the award of the contract and ordered his spokesperson, Inmaculada Sanz , to replace him."
However, the mayor's decree was not published in the Official Gazette of the Madrid City Council (BOAM) nor in the Contracting Portal, where the most important documents of the tender are usually posted, although the public contracts law does not require it. .
For the second case, the Mobility delegate Borja Carabante received the award proposal and again abstained, although "the General Technical Secretariat was already informed of the incompatibilities generated by Subterra."
Following this statement, the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, has denied that there is "discrimination" or "favourable treatment" by the Madrid City Council in matters of public procurement, mobility and payment of taxes.
And in his reply, he accused the Vox spokesman, Javier Ortega Smith, of "adopting podemite rhetoric" with a speech "against big companies."
"If you consider that we are discriminating in hiring, you are accusing municipal employees of discriminating," he commented, while he has also noted that two thirds of the tenders are directed at SMEs and the self-employed.
