Carlos Alonso, the head of the Civil Guard Command in Ávila between 2015 and the end of 2017, declared before the Internal Affairs division of the body that the then Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jarava, one of the four people with the highest rank within the Benemérita at the national level in those years, had told him that he should hire a company linked to the Mediator case for the works in “numerous barracks in the province.”
The suspicions that surrounded the concession of said works, located between the second half of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, gave rise to an investigation that uncovered the allegedly irregular awarding of reconditioning contracts in up to 13 barracks in various parts of Spain and that, as had happened in Ávila, they were granted to the companies of Angel Ramon Tejera de Leonalias ‘Mon’, a businessman whose name appears linked to the mediator case and that, in addition, he is a friend of the retired general of the Civil Guard Francisco Espinosa, the only defendant in the Canarian extortion plot who, until now, remains in provisional prison.
These data have been confirmed by this writing based on an order of the Investigating Court number 2 of Ávila, to which it has had access THE SPANISH NEWSPAPERfrom the Prensa Ibérica group, in which it was already recorded that Internal Affairs was investigating the “possible illegal action of the then head of the Civil Guard Command in Ávila”, and in which it was indicated that the payments for the reforms were authorized despite the fact that in some cases the works had not been fully completed or had not even started to be carried out at the time of payment.
Carlos Alonso He was appointed head of the Civil Guard Command in Ávila in May 2015 and transferred back to Madrid at the end of 2017, just two years after his appointment. As to Pedro Vazquez Jarava, who was one of the four people with the highest rank within the organization chart of the Civil Guard, was dismissed from his position in the Madrid Support and Innovation command on January 18, 2018. This newspaper has tried to contact Pedro Vázquez Jarava and with Carlos Alonso, proving impossible until now. As far as the Civil Guard is concerned, it is emphasized that they do not comment on judicialized matters, although they do want to emphasize that they “reject any behavior” in the body that could be illegal if proven.
The rank of lieutenant general is the highest within the Civil Guard
The range of lieutenant general, the one who had Jarava, It is the highest that can be aspired to within the Civil Guard. In fact, right now there are only five people in all of Spain who hold it, and that in 2020 the Council of Ministers approved expanding their number by one.
The rank of lieutenant general is the highest within the Civil Guard
In this case, and according to the record to which this newspaper has had access, Alonso pointed out during his statement to the lieutenant general who was in command of the General Support Subdirectorate of the Civil Guard. As explained by the Prosecutor’s Office, during the investigations the Ávila command officer assured that the contracting with the Tejera companies “came determined” directly from Vázquez Jarava, the aforementioned lieutenant general. From the sub-directorate that he headed, the budget allocation for the payment of the works would have been “decentralized.”
For his part, Ángel Ramón Tejera de León, who is not being investigated in the ‘Mediator plot’, is a businessman in the construction sector who appears five times in summary of the case and always linked to the same meeting. It is a meeting attended by the defendants Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, the mediator who gives the plot its name; the former General Director of Livestock of the Government of the Canary Islands, Taishet Sources; The general Francisco Espinosa and the businessman Antonio Bautista Prado. It takes place on November 4, 2020 at the Hotel Escuela de Tenerife.
The income of the companies increased “enormously”
It was, however, as a result of what happened at the Ávila headquarters that the Internal Services body of the Civil Guard set out to open a new line of investigation in the case. In his report, summarized in the aforementioned order, it was noted that, between the second half of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, the two companies belonging to Ramón Tejera de León, alias Mon in the investigation of the Mediator case, they had obtained the award of numerous contracts reconditioning not only in the barracks in the province of Ávila, but in various communities throughout Spain.
Internal Affairs of the Civil Guard discovered that thirteen commands would have contracted with the two aforementioned companies, based in the Canary Islands, “painting and waterproofing work on dates close to those indicated above”, that is, at the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017, ” despite the fact that this type of work was usually carried out by local companies”.
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The barracks that that report talks about are in Murcia, Albacete, Algeciras, Alicante, Ávila, Badajoz, Castellón, Huelva, Jaén, La Coruña, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Toledo and Valladolid. The works would have allowed the two aforementioned companies to “enormously increase billing and income,” according to the Internal Affairs investigation.
EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA has unsuccessfully tried to contact the Canarian businessman to find out his version of events.