Alberto Cassero (Cáceres, 1978) became famous in early February when he pressed the wrong button and allowed the government to carry out labor reform. A few weeks later, the People’s Party’s civil war put him more outside than inside the national executive body of which he was a part, forming “No. 3”. Now, in addition, he has an open court front: the Supreme Court intends to investigate five dubious contracts he made during his time as mayor of the extremist city of Trujillo. Contracts, contracts and invoices worth more than € 94,000, which, according to prosecutors, Cassero started by missing out on contract procedures. Sometimes he did not even inform the City Council that he was in charge.
Cassero’s career took off in 2011 when he won Trujillo municipal elections as the leader of the popular party list and with an absolute majority, which tripled the PSOE-won councilors in the city with a population of 9,000. The absolute majority that he verified in 2015 and that PP lost in 2019, when Cassero had already run for Congress as head of Caceres’s list. According to the allegations that now aggravate him, in addition, during his last two years at the helm of Trujillo City Hall, he devoted himself to concluding contracts, paying taxes and signing contracts, skipping all necessary procedures. The council did not ultimately pay for many of these invoices and contracts, and various provincial courts have since condemned the payment of council suppliers.
The first suspicious procedure in the list of the prosecutor’s office is from March 2017. Cassero agreed with psychologist Pablo Bonilla that he trained at City Hall to attend to women victims of sexist violence. In total, four invoices for work worth € 6,220, which he claims he completed from March to June of the same year. In addition, in August the mayor signed him a small contract for psychological services for one year in the amount of 18,000 euros. At the time it was the limit to consider a small contract and be able to award it without a competition.
The prosecution explains that Cassero made this € 24,120 from the council without informing the council itself, without submitting a contract, without starting a contract case and, of course, without consulting a contractor about the need to have this psychologist. . In fact, according to the prosecution, there is no evidence that Bonilla did the job for which he was paid. In addition, attention to victims of sexist violence, for which he was allegedly hired, was transferred through a commission that has no record of what the psychologist did. The Cასceres court has completed the payment of an invoice in the amount of almost 3,000 euros to the City Council.
The second questionable award came in September 2017. As mayor, Cassero signed an institutional cooperation framework agreement with the president of the Peruvian Chamber of Commerce in Spain. He also signed an agreement under which the council undertook to finance this agreement with 25,000 euros. This agreement was not passed to the economic-legal services of the City Council, nor was the copy submitted to the intervention, nor was it approved at the plenary session, nor was it approved by the resolution of the City Hall. Of course, it was not published in the state official gazette and was not subject to any kind of public information, although there was a contract which, due to its volume, could not be processed as a minor and direct supplier.
This agreement infuriated Trujillo. It was intended, the prosecution emphasizes, to pay a “gastro-tour” in the same year in cooperation with Peru. In November of the same year, Cassero appeared at the Palacio de los Barrantes-Cervantes in the city with the Peruvian ambassador to present the project in Spain. In an interview with the Peruvian Chamber of Commerce that year, Cassero made it clear: “Our municipality will be the perfect link between Peru and Spain.” But three years later, the Peruvian Chamber of Commerce in Spain filed a lawsuit against the city council and demanded a debt of 30,250 euros in two invoices, which it said had not been paid. The request of the Chamber of Commerce is being studied by the disputed court.
Also in 2017, Alberto Cassero signed a verbal agreement with a cultural association called Bon Vivant. The agreement, in principle, was for sponsorship and that the annual “Pop Eye” award ceremony will be held the same year in Trujillo. In return, the City Council invested 18,000 euros from the public line, again with a small contract limit. These awards, according to their website, were held in the city of Caceres until 2017, and in 2018 were held in Trujillo. The mayor once again did not notify the council, did not process the contract file or the report confirming the necessity of the expenditure or approving the amount.
The operation behind the back of the administration was repeated a year later: the obligation to pay 18,000 euros without VAT and to cover 9349 euros more expenses. The difference is that at that time the latest amendment to the law on public sector contracts was already in force, which reduced the limit on hand-signed contracts: from 18,000 euros to 15,000 euros. Nevertheless, according to Cassero’s prosecution, he did not initiate any kind of administrative proceedings. Finally, invoices were not paid.
In January 2018, Cassero hired the company ‘ICARO Consultores en Comunicación’ to organize another gastronomic event: International Cheese Exhibition. This market placed one hundred stalls related to the sale of cheese at Trujillo Plaza City Hall, gathered more than 100,000 people and united as one of the big events of the city. The organization was responsible for this contract in the amount of 14,303 euros, this time below the legal limit for small contracts, but again without informing the City Council.
Cassero, prosecutors said, did not notify Consistory’s legal services, did not provide a signed contract, did not request a preliminary report, and even criticized the intervention for treating it as a minor contract when it was expected. Service. Organizing the cheese market was not even the responsibility of the mayor: there is a fair institution called Ferex, which is run by a consortium of which Trujillo City Hall is part, as well as representatives of the councils of Caceres, Badajoz and Extremadura. The court of Cერceres ordered him to pay 17,300 euros for the services rendered to the council.
The last contract investigated by the Supreme Court was signed in the last weeks of 2018, when Cassero signed a contract with Radio Interior to promote the cheese market. Once again, Cassero signed a payment of more than 15,000 euros as if it were a minor contract. In this case, moreover, it was a regular annual rebate that was repeated for seven years and, the prosecution recalls, had to be put out to tender openly. The radio sued the Home Office and the court fined the Trujillo administration € 18,100 for the company.
Source: El Diario
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