Some investigations go at cruising speed and others, at a sparrow's pace. Such is the case of the investigation that the Catalan Court of Auditors has had open for two years against controversial magistrate Daniel de Alfonso, regarding the money he collected as director of the Anti-Fraud Unit of Catalonia (OAC). The case against De Alfonso has the number 68/2019 and the prosecution, which requested to open the investigation in July 2018, expressed that it is still "premature" to indicate what will be its final position and, therefore, the possible amounts to demand from him, according to the court’s press sources. In other words, there has been no progress for two years.
The Catalan Public Audit Office sent two reports to the Court of Accounts on the expenditure of De Alfonso as head of the Anti-Fraud Unit and in 2020 determined that the magistrate would have unduly charged about 300,000 euros more between 2011 and 2016, the year in which he was dismissed by the Parliament of Catalonia when some recorded conversations of him with former Spanish minister of interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, against the Catalan government, were leaked. According to this report, which complements one from 2018, De Alfonso would have collected three-yearly salary increases and quality complements that did not correspond to him and pointed out the possibility that he could be prosecuted judicially. For this reason, the Court of Accounts’ prosecutor's office asked for an investigation to be opened. It was reported that the subscription to the Liceu Theater, paid with public funds, was one of the irregular expenses of De Alfonso. Years ago, however, more than one department of the government did the same.
Besides finding out whether De Alfonso charged undue expenses, the calculation of seniority in statutory bodies has been controversial. The Parliament of Catalonia rules that civil servants, especially lawyers and secretaries, receive 5% of the three-yearly salary increases, which is calculated according to the last salary and not the category in which they have been generated and accrued, as is the case for officials of the Generalitat. The calculation of the Parliament of Catalonia was also the one applied by the Anti-Fraud Unit until its current director, magistrate Miguel Ángel Gimeno, changed it last year and matched it to the system of the Generalitat. The Catalan Public Audit Office demanded he pay the three-yearly salary increase as ruled by the Parliament of Catalonia’s system from 2010 to 2018, and Gimeno responded that it implied mortgaging almost half the staff of the entity (half a million euros). Thus, Anti-Fraud Unit’s civil servants receive 5% of the three-yearly salary increase, as fixed by the Parliament of Catalonia, but only that achieved in the Unit, and the rest in the administration and category reached. Besides this, the Catalan Public Audit Office has established that senior officials do not have to collect the three-yearly salary increase generated at this job, a decision that also is not shared by all the organizations.
A blow to the Catalan health system
After leaving the Anti-Fraud Unit, Judge De Alfonso became responsible for the Prison Supervision Court No. 1 of Cantabria, where he has family and is still currently assigned. In the midst of the crisis, the Judiciary assured that he could not be removed as a judge because the irregularities for which he was accused, although serious, were not carried out in the exercise of his duties as a magistrate. At the Barcelona’s Provincial Audience, Daniel de Alfonso had asked fellow judges for some favours on cases of people on trial, which nobody ever denounced. However, more than one was annoyed with him, according to some witnesses.
In the commission of the Congress of Deputies on Operation Kitchen, of espionage of the PP to its ex-treasurer Luis Bárcenas and now finished, we have learned that the recording of the conversation between De Alfonso and Fernandez Díaz was ordered by the minister of the interior himself, according to one of his police officers and member of the patriotic police he created. It has also been proven that, in addition to wanting to destroy evidence of illegal charges to the PP, they also organized Operation Catalunya in order to destabilize the Catalan government and the pro-independence movement leaders.
In an appearance in Congress, in April 2017, the ex-chief of the Anti-Fraud Unit assured that famous phrase of his, which Spanish newspaper Público published in June 2016 and which went viral, had been "decontextualized". It said: "We have smacked them in the face with Ramón Bagó, we have destroyed their healthcare system, we have accused them, we are screwing them with the Telecommunications and Information Technology Centre (CTTI)".
In his administration, De Alfonso formally accused the health committees that managed some Catalan hospitals, in which he assured that "public and private interests were mixed". The CUP had also denounced it, and the Innova case, in Reus, is proof of this. Then the Serhs group was accused, whose chairman is businessman Ramón Bagó, who benefited from various public contracts. In the end, the public prosecutor's office closed the investigation, although it reproached Bagó for the incompatibility of the different positions he held.
In the controversial conversation, De Alfonso boasts of being Spanish, but living in Catalonia, when the minister asks him for more pressure against the Catalan government and the independence supporters. At another point, the magistrate tells Fernandez Díaz: "Consider me a corporal of your national corps" and Fernandez Díaz replies: "Expedite what you can with prosecutor Bermejo", who was then in the Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office in Barcelona, and then went to Madrid.
Who tunes it up?
The ex-director of the central operational support unit (UCAO) of the National Police Enrique García Castaño revealed, last April, that he was behind the recording of the conversation between former minister of the interior Jorge Fernández Díaz and the ex-chief of the Anti-Fraud Unit of Catalonia Daniel de Alfonso, in which Fernández Díaz pronounced the phrase "the prosecutor's office will tune it up for you". The ex-commissioner said this to the Congress of Deputies’ commission on Operation Kitchen. Castaño also attributed the so-called Catalunya operation to investigate Catalan politicians to the former PP minister.
Last December 3rd, Jorge Fernández Díaz appeared in the Congress of Deputies in the Kitchen commission and had it out with the spokespersons of ERC, Junts and CUP for the famous audio. "I do not say ‘the prosecutor's office will tune it up for you’, it is not my lexicon. The scientific police send me a report accrediting that I say ‘the prosecution well.... I manage a process’, and that, with a cut-and-paste, ends up becoming ‘the prosecutor's office refines it for you and destroying the Catalan health system’”. Despite the evidence, the former minister has not assumed any responsibility, just as he didn’t in the 2017 appearance to Congress.
Main photo: The ex-director of the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia, Daniel de Alfonso /ACN.