The Diplomat
The Vox Parliamentary Group announced yesterday that during the week it will file a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the alleged embezzlement of five million euros in the office of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) in Panama.
As explained in a video by the group’s spokesperson, Macarena Olona, they have decided to put the matter in the hands of Anticorruption after having access to a report drawn up by the Foreign Ministry’s Management Control and Improvement Division, which was sent in June 2020 to the Court of Auditors, reports Europa Press.
Olona indicates in her speech that they tried to access this report, but the government of Pedro Sánchez did not provide it to them. This led them to take the matter to the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court, which finally agreed with their claim for information.
Now, after having been able to study the report, they have decided not only to go to Anticorrupción for an investigation, but also to request the appearance in the Congress of Deputies of up to nine officials and former officials of the Foreign Ministry, including the Minister José Manuel Albares, the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Pilar Cancela, and the Secretary of State for Foreign and Global Affairs, Ángeles Moreno Bau.
They are joined by the appearance of the director of the AECID, Antón Leis García, the former directors Aina Calvo, Magdy Esteban Martínez Juan López-Doriga and Luis Tejada Chacón, and the general coordinator of Spanish cooperation in Panama, José Antonio González Mancebo.
In March 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself reported that the embezzlement carried out by an employee of the AECID office in Panama amounted to at least five million euros that were stolen over a period of ten years.
This was confirmed by Moreno Bau in a parliamentary appearance, where he also warned that they had not detected “any notable problems” after reviewing the tax and treasury situation in the other 49 offices.
The embezzlement was detected in February 2020 “due to the unjustified absence of the accounting administrator of the AECID’s Technical Cooperation Office in Panama” and as soon as the facts became known, the Spanish Embassy, by order of the Ministry, proceeded to file “a complaint with the Panamanian Public Prosecutor’s Office” and also proceeded to suspend this person from employment and salary.
In March, a mission from the General Inspectorate of Services and the Foreign Ministry’s Management Control and Improvement Division arrived in Panama and drew up a report on what had happened, which was sent to the Court of Auditors on 8 June.
In addition to notifying the Panamanian authorities of what happened, a local law firm was hired in June so that the AECID “could appear in the trial as the injured party” and filed a complaint in the Central American country on 11 June.
Now, Olona points out that, given the content of the report, he understands that the government “tried to hide it” because when the alleged embezzlement became known, what the Foreign Ministry did “was to dismiss the general coordinator in Panama, who denounced the serious facts”.
She adds that the report accredits that the person who was the office’s accountant had embezzled more than five million dollars by means of false bank cheques, as he had forged the joint signature of his immediate superior. Olona explains that these cheques were endorsed to a Spanish gambling company, a casino.
