The Court of Auditors has increased from 82,341.27 to 142,484.47 euros the amount that the former director of the Catalonia Anti-Fraud Office (OAC), Daniel de Alfonso, must return for the trienniums improperly collected during the years he was in charge of the entity, between 2011 and 2016. According to the OAC in a statement, the Justice Chamber of the Court of Auditors has partially upheld the appeals filed by both them and the Prosecutor’s Office against its initial ruling, which raises the amount that Judge De Alfonso will have to return to 142,484.47 euros, adding interest.
In its initial ruling, now modified by partially upholding the appeals of Anti-Fraud and the Prosecutor’s Office, the audit body concluded that the damage caused was 138,240.88 euros, but that the liability had partly expired due to the years in which those irregular payments were made, as trienniums to which he was not entitled.
According to the audit body, in the exercise of his functions, De Alfonso issued the resolutions recognizing seniority and trienniums and ordered the payment of salaries including trienniums earned in previous positions as if they had been in the office.
Daniel de Alfonso held the position of director of the Anti-Fraud Office for five years. His term was interrupted in 2016 when he was dismissed by the Parliament, after recordings of conversations he had with then Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz (PP) became public.
The dismissal was approved by 120 votes in favor, coming from Junts pel Sí (JxSí), Ciudadanos, PSC, Catalunya Sí que es Pot, and the CUP in the regional assembly. Only the 11 PP deputies opposed this measure.
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In the recordings, reported by the newspaper Público, De Alfonso referred to alleged cases of corruption involving political leaders from ERC and CDC. The then director of the OAC explained to the Interior Minister that they were “investigating things about Esquerra,” and added that “they are very weak, that is the truth, minister.” The dialogue between De Alfonso and Fernández Díaz took place in 2014.
The “things” De Alfonso referred to were related to the company Cespa, a subsidiary of Ferrovial, where the brother of the ERC leader, Oriol Junqueras, was working at the time. The OAC director himself admitted in the conversation the weakness of the investigation, but the minister insisted that the billing volume of Cespa had skyrocketed during the dates to which the inquiries referred.
De Alfonso also told Fernández Díaz that there was another matter that might interest him, related to the promotion of two sisters-in-law of Felip Puig —former minister of Business and Employment— by the also former minister —of Presidency— Francesc Homs, a promotion that might have been irregularly favored.
The resolution approved by the Parliament on the dismissal of the director of the Catalonia Anti-Fraud Office argued that the content of the conversations constituted “a notorious and serious breach” of the duties and obligations inherent to the position held by De Alfonso. Specifically, the Catalan regional assembly considered that the duties of “independence and objectivity,” as well as those of “discretion and confidentiality,” had been breached from the OAC leadership.
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