On November 23, 2023, the then former Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, and his trusted man, Koldo García, met in a canteen to talk about Santos Cerdán, who was still secretary of the PSOE Organization, and they uttered a name: “Justo”. Koldo talked about it, only once. “Santos (Cerdán) went to the Ministry to place two men from Justo, from Acciona,” he told Ábalos. And he repeated: “He is trying to place two men that Acciona asked him.”
“Justo” was Justo Vicente Pelegrini, then CEO of Acciona Construction in Spain, Portugal and North Africa, as the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Guardia Civil notes at the bottom of its June report, which led Cerdán to the temporary prison in which he still finds himself today. Four days after the publication of the UCO report which included audio of the conversations, Acciona Pelegrini fired. More than four months later, Pelegrini has not been called to testify or testify by the Supreme Court, which is investigating the alleged conspiracy of bribes in exchange for public works hatched by Cerdán, Ábalos and Koldo, but the search that took place on Friday in two offices in Acciona brings attention back to the construction company without which the conspiracy would not even be understood. Because no one can collect if no one pays.
Waiting for the role of the construction company to emerge from those registers the Cerdan casehis modus operandi to obtain some of his public contracts – services, in another case – he registers with a court in Seville. The story of a mid-level manager fired from Acciona Infrastructure a couple of years ago, and the court file amassed in the case against his dismissal, belie Acciona’s alleged anti-corruption zeal. And not only for the irregularities that the file reveals, but because the company fired the very worker who had reported them, according to the sentence that required his reinstatement and who advanced in his time Infobae, when he Koldo-Ábalos case it wasn’t yet the The Cerdan case. Unlike Pelegrini, those responsible for these irregularities remain within the company.
Kill the messengers
At least until the worker’s report, at the end of 2021, Acciona operated with a Gmail inbox, external to the company email system, where the territorial delegates from all over Spain sent the specifications with the conditions of the public tenders that they obtained before they were published by the Municipalities and other bodies, with the consequent competitive advantage in presenting their offer. Acciona, contacted by this newspaper, admits the existence of that mailbox, but assures that it was closed after the internal complaint and that it was “the director himself who ordered its closure”, according to a company spokesperson.
The “director” was Francisco Javier López Buciega, and it was he who the worker had reported internally through the company’s Compliance channel. The head of Compliance was Joaquín Collado, former senior commander of the anti-terrorism fight of the Guardia Civil who had worked in the Entrecanales family company since 2013, and had also been appointed instructor of the internal investigation. Faced with the right to confidentiality that the law recognizes to whistleblowers, Collado, who operated in espionage activities, traced company emails to find links to the anonymous email account from which the whistleblower sent the information and evidence of his complaint, until he discovered it.
The worker, who did not want to respond to this newspaper, but whose phases the sentence traces in detail, continued to communicate through the channel, believing he was doing so anonymously. And he exposed “his fear of losing his job” because Buciega “forced him to skip” ethics and compliance rules, telling him that anyone who was “unwilling would be fired from the company,” according to the ruling. He sent several more emails – nine of which he himself had sent to the Gmail inbox -, screenshots, audio and video. On January 27, 2022, after several weeks of communications, the complaining employee agreed to meet with Collado as an instructor of the internal investigation. Fifteen days later he was fired.
In May 2024 the dismissal was declared null and void, the worker had to be reinstated. However, the Gmail inbox was not the only means through which Acciona obtained privileged information on contracts. In an email about a consultant involved in the case, Buciega told a subordinate that he had to “eliminate any reference to the commission, transforming it into an obligation to contract the services included in his offer,” as the ruling reads. And an audio supplemented the email revealing that Acciona had hired “the consultancy company that prepared the specifications for the city council, to obtain rewards, as was done with the Alicante city council”, specifies the ruling.
“It is particularly relevant that the facts reported by the (worker) all had an objective basis,” underlines the judge. “Screenshots of Whatsapp and the emails provided were not challenged at the hearing as to their authenticity,” either by the company or by director Buciega. All material contributed to the file “was considered authentic,” and Buciega only sought to question them in drawing up the trial’s conclusions, out of place.
At the dismissal trial, the then CEO of Acciona Construcciones, Justo Vicente Pelegrini, was called as a witness, but did not appear, according to published reports The world after Cerdán entered prison. A colleague of the complainant presented himself and testified that he had attended a party at the height of the Covid pandemic with the staff of a municipality in the Community of Madrid, Colmenar Viejo, of which a video was recorded. At trial he acknowledged that he had leaked the video and that he had contributed to the company’s whistleblowing file. He was fired on the same day as the complainant. According to Acciona’s spokesperson, also for “a departmental restructuring”, although for the judge “the idea of dismissal as retaliation” is strengthened.
Neither Buciega, who remains in his post, nor the head of the internal investigation, Joaquín Collado, a former lieutenant colonel of the Civil Guard who today has “security responsibilities” in Acciona, according to a spokesperson, wanted to speak to this newspaper. The company spokesperson claims that Acciona believes that, as it was a labor matter, the irregularities found in the process were not investigated, because internally it was believed that they did not exist. “The worker was reinstated in (2024) in compliance with the ruling.” Acciona appealed the sentence, but in a conversation with this newspaper on Friday, his spokesperson announced he was withdrawing. “The ruling is now final,” he said.
