The anonymous letter addressed to the Secretary of State for Security of the Government of the PP by which Internal Affairs of the Civil Guard began an investigation on May 29, 2018 into the “alleged irregularities in terms of hiring in the Ávila Command”, already warned of an alleged illicit enrichment of former lieutenant colonel Carlos Alonso, one of the four investigated in the ‘Cuarteles case’. In this case, uncovered by El Periódico de España, from the Prensa Ibérica group, awards are being investigated for a value of more than 3.3 million euros to the Canarian builder Ángel Ramón Tejera de León, alias ‘Mon’, also accused, who would have received alleged favored treatment from the Lieutenant General of the Civil Guard Pedro Vazquez Jarava.
“He has kept money. He has thrown in his pavilion, I don’t know how much they say, that more than 20,000 euros, but it seems that he has pocketed something. And to top it off without living in said pavilion“, says the document on Alonso literally, which appears in the summary of the ‘Cuarteles case’, and to which this newspaper has had access. The message refers to the works carried out by a company, which is not included in the procedure , which was entrusted with the adaptation of the pavilion of the head of the Command for an amount of 12,927 euros.
The anonymous message also asks the Secretary of State to reopen an internal audit “to find out each and every one of the works that he did and where is the money in an exhaustive way with delegated controllers from Madrid”.
Ministry of Interior
Upon receiving the document, the Ministry of the Interior transferred it to the Operations Section of the General Staff of the General Directorate of the Civil Guard, which ordered Internal Affairs to initiate the investigations. The initial study, of a confidential nature, which was prepared by the Chief Comptroller Commander of the Economic Management Unit of the Civil Guard in Castilla y León and which works in the summary of the case, already detected the first irregularities. Like for example the Lack of an official letter for the adjudication of the work of the pavilion of the commander of Ávila and the certification that the company that was in charge of the works was up to date with its payments with the Treasury.
However, the rest of the legal requirements had been met, such as the existence of three budgets from as many firms. In this case, the walls were painted and the windows were replaced, so the inspector understood that the works had been carried out. Despite this, he verified that in relation to the qualities and the number of remodeled windows the documentation provided was “contradictory”.
The anonymous document accuses the lieutenant colonel of “cheat and scam with the cashier” to give funds “to his cronies”, with whom he was “in cahoots” to do “embezzlement-type” things. He also accused Alonso of having kept furniture and used the official car every day for more than “200-odd km” to move from Ávila, the town where he had his official residence, to Madrid, where he has his family home.
changed the furniture
The report prepared on December 10, 2018 by the chief inspector of the Civil Guard in Castilla y León also investigated these other complaints. And the investigations confirmed that the furniture in the lieutenant colonel’s office had been changed by Carlos Alonso: “But It has not been possible to specify the date, or what legal transaction produced such a change, or where the previous furniture is. Neither the previous ones nor the present ones appear in the inventory”, highlights the office.
In relation to the use of the official car, the inspector points out that the sergeant of the Rolling Material Service stated that he did not know of any way to regulate its use: “However, recognizes that more kilometers than usual were covered with the previous head of Command [Carlos Alonso]“, completed the uniformed.
However, the anonymous did allow the investigators to discover that the builder Tejera de León, whose name appears five times in the mediator casehad pocketed more than 120,000 euros with minor contracts. The auditor detected that a high percentage of the painting works of 2016, despite having been paid to the companies of ‘Mon’, had not actually been carried out. Specifically, the Solocorcho firm issued eleven invoices for 48,443 euros, of which 37,474 euros would not have been executed. Andrasurcor presented ten invoices for 47,113 euros, of which 36,865 euros were not executed. And the third, Canarycork, issued another three invoices for 14,602 euros, with 7,570 euros that were not made, always according to the report resulting from the Internal Affairs investigations.
patrimonial investigation
Precisely, the patrimonial investigation carried out by Internal Affairs ended up detecting that Alonso, who is now number two of the Tres Cantos Command (Madrid), entered 21,500 euros in cash into his bank accounts “whose origin could not be determined”. “These deposits of cash, listed below, are made, in general, the same day or on the dates prior to the occurrence of certain payment needs (monthly loan amortization installments, charges with credit operations… .)”, completes the police official note, which specified the dates and amounts of the aforementioned income, which ranged between 1,000 and 6,000 euros.
In a letter directed by the defense lawyer of this Civil Guard officer, it was argued that Alonso had not had a “significant” capital increase. In the same sense, the funds that he entered in cash were justified because in 2010 his family started “savings in cash, fluctuating the amounts available according to expenses and saving capacity”.
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Another part of the money detected came from the “mother-in-law” of the high command of the Civil Guard, According to the lawyer, he lived with his daughter and son-in-law for two years. She passed away in 2010, but according to this explanation she gave them cash for “living” expenses. Some funds that would have entered in later years in her bank accounts.
“domestic savings”
“Another explanation for any inflow of money is that usually in community expenses with family or friends (dinner, gifts, etc…) my client and his wife were in charge of assuming payment with credit or debit cards, facing the other parties their reimbursement through cash that facilitate the marriage. This money is deposited by the marriage and contributes to domestic savings”, completes the letter from the lawyer, who has asked the Madrid judge investigating the cause that her client declare in the case. The aforementioned anonymous letter was not the first that tried to put an end to corruption within the Civil Guard, since another document that was sent to the Armed Institute was blocked by the then Deputy Director General of the Corps Support Command, Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jarava, as advanced by this medium. “It is not necessary to notify the Prosecutor’s Office,” said Jarava, who today is the principal of the four defendants in this case. This first notice to the prosecutor ended up filed in the drawers of the Ministry of the Interior at the time, as this newspaper announced.