The PSOE has taken to the courts the purchase of the Chamberí penthouse by the Madrid Government. The secretary general of the Madrid socialists, Óscar López, announced this Friday the complaint to the board of directors of Planifica Madrid, the public company through which the 6.3 million euro operation was carried out, before the Economic Crimes Prosecutor’s Office to investigate possible crimes of administrative misconduct and embezzlement, in a document accessed by EL PAÍS. “I feel sorry for all those others who have been carrying out this activity so that Mrs. Ayuso has a penthouse. They will regret it,” López said in a press conference held at Ferraz, the party’s national headquarters.
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The minister in Pedro Sánchez’s government also called for the resignation of the president of Madrid, considering her situation “unsustainable.” The 485 square meter penthouse that Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s government (PP) bought three months ago to use as “offices” will be back on sale in the coming days, once EL PAÍS revealed its existence – it was impossible to trace because it did not appear in either the agenda or the budget of Planifica Madrid – and reported that it did not have a license for office use. Now, it is also known that it could not be used as an official residence either. Although Ayuso insists it was not bought for that purpose, the PSOE suspects that this was the real reason for its acquisition.
López referred to the statements of the Minister of the Presidency, Miguel Ángel García Martín, who assured that other regional presidents and ministers have official residences. García Martín, on whom Planifica Madrid depends, has taken on the responsibility of justifying the purchase, once Ayuso said she had “no idea” about the real estate operations carried out by the company. “Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta,” said the minister about García Martín’s words. “The minister knows what he was doing. He knows he was buying a luxury penthouse for the president of the Community of Madrid. And he admits it in those statements. If the president wants to have an official residence, she should do it through the appropriate channels, with transparency, and it should be debated where it needs to be debated, but what she cannot do is secretly with an illegal procedure to buy herself a luxury penthouse to her liking in one of the best areas of Madrid,” he elaborated.
Ayuso, for her part, appeared at an event in the Sierra Oeste of Madrid, where most of the hectares burned in the late July fires. She was visibly uncomfortable with the questions from journalists who attended an event that was only announced an hour before, a very unusual practice for her communication team, which usually details the agenda very precisely from the night before. “I don’t work for my adversaries who are on vacation,” Ayuso said at the end, referring to the president of the Government. The president reproached the journalists for not asking about the victims of the fires. “We are giving our all, helping the people who are going through such a hard time. Have the sensitivity to at least pretend and ask what news there is. I don’t work for Pedro Sánchez nor for what my adversaries organize. When they return from vacation, we’ll talk,” she added.
The socialists have released the document justifying the complaint before the Economic Crimes Prosecutor’s Office. In their view, there are “gaps and procedural irregularities” as these are facts affecting the public administration in relation to its assets. In addition to “the total absence of public documentation to support and clarify them, which should have been published.” So far, the Community of Madrid has not disclosed the Planifica Madrid file in which the price and the justificatory report of why this penthouse was bought, and not others, and what it was ultimately going to be used for, should appear in detail. The government handled it with such opacity that, as this newspaper has learned, most of the public company’s workers were unaware of its existence, something unusual.
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In fact, Planifica Madrid updated its agenda on the website very thoroughly until the very day of the penthouse purchase, in April. From then on, silence. Before, it reported all its activities no matter how minor. After this newspaper revealed it yesterday, the company has been updating the calendar this morning up to the 16th. On that very day, a notarized signature appears that can only be that of the penthouse. Finally, Planifica Madrid catches up and fills these gaps in the agenda. Until now, no one could have accessed that information, unlike what happened with other purchases that were disclosed in full detail. For some reason, everything related to its purchase was hidden.
The PSOE suspects that the company, taking advantage of being a private law commercial entity, was used to avoid asset regulations and their controls. The opposition party finds the explanations vague that the penthouse was going to be Ayuso’s temporary office while works were carried out at the Presidency headquarters. They are also struck by the absence of a budget provision for its purchase and believe that, when the whole operation ends, there may be economic harm to public funds. The socialists have launched a series of questions that also concern those investigating this case: Did the president or someone related to her visit the property? Did the president or someone directly related to her contact the real estate agency or the seller? How did the sale offer reach Planifica? Who really made the acquisition decision?
There are many questions to be answered; the mystery surrounding the penthouse purchase continues.
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