The senior management of the territorial services in Alicante of the Housing Department of the Generalitat has led the first day of witness statements in the course of the proceedings opened by a judge to investigate irregularities in the allocation of public protection housing (VPP) in the luxury development Les Naus. In their statements, the three summoned officials acknowledged that there is no rule requiring developers to have greater control over tenders and confirmed that all the files for this development were handled by the Housing official who was suspended from employment and pay for favoring his wife, a beneficiary of one of the apartments.
Before the presiding judge of the Instruction Court 5 of Alicante appeared the territorial director of Housing in Alicante, Juan Manuel Galbis, the head of service, Concepción Morillas, and the deputy secretary, Vicente Caturla. At the request of the prosecution, the three testified simultaneously, as expert witnesses, according to sources close to the case confirmed to EL PAÍS. In the presence of the lawyers from PSOE and Ciudadanos, who exercise popular action, and the Anti-Corruption prosecution, the witnesses admitted the lack of rigor in the allocation processes of the VPP, initially intended for people who would use them as their primary residence and whose family income did not exceed 54,000 euros.
However, senior officials from the PP of the City Council and the Generalitat or their relatives, such as councilor Rocío Gómez, the children of the municipal general director María Pérez Hickman, or the ex-wife of the chief of staff of the Tourism Department, Miguel Ángel Sánchez, among others, received the keys to three- and four-bedroom homes with storage rooms and garages, which were part of a development with sports courts, swimming pool, and gym located in the Playa de San Juan district, one of the most exclusive areas of the city. And for about 200,000 euros, half the average price in that area.
According to the witnesses’ statements, it was the developer who “personally” allocated the properties, under requirements supervised by the department. However, they confirm that there is no regulation requiring bidders to have exhaustive control over compliance with these requirements. As an example, senior officials of the cabinet led by the Vice President of the Consell, Susana Camarero, indicated that family income and the obligation that the assigned properties be the only property of the applicants were checked through income tax and the property registry. But in no case was it investigated whether the awardee had several properties in the name of a company in which they might appear as an administrator.
Another possible loophole through which irregularities could slip in was that the family members accessing the apartments were only verified through a responsible declaration by the applicants. These control deficiencies over the direct allocation by the developer are what have led, the attendees said, the administration to work on greater regulation of these allocations. In the case of Les Naus, it was the first VPP development in the city of Alicante in two decades.
Galbis also recounted how the irregular intervention in the visa of Roberto Palencia, the Housing official who was suspended from employment and pay for facilitating his wife’s access to one of these homes, was discovered. According to sources consulted by this newspaper, the territorial director stated that he was called from Valencia to ask about “a woman’s name” that matched Palencia’s wife’s name, a municipal official. When interrogated, Galbis says his employee replied: “I’m very sorry, I messed up and will assume all the consequences.” According to the witnesses, this official “on his own initiative” took on the 140 files that made up the entire Les Naus development and the processing was done electronically. Despite these irregularities, Palencia returned to his position last Monday.
Finally, the judge has requested the attendees a report on the luxury VPP whose allocation, in the words of the mayor himself, Luis Barcala, is “a scandal.” This documentation will be handled by the three senior officials cited today and five more Housing technicians, who must appear before the instructor on the 24th. In statements collected by Efe before the Benalúa courts, the Ciudadanos lawyer, Eduardo García-Ontiveros, said that today’s appearance is the first of many to try to clarify the tendering of the Les Naus VPP, “a loot for a few,” in his opinion. “It cannot be that the rest of Spaniards have very complicated access to public housing,” he concluded, and that in the Alicante residential all “requirements, especially documentation and economic ones,” have been bypassed.