On 15 June 2021, the Guardia Civil arrested Óscar Liria, then third vice-president of the Provincial Council of Almería, on charges of having collected bribes between 200,000 and 400,000 euros from a healthcare supplies contract worth two million euros awarded by this supranational body to the company Azor Corporate Ibérica, owned by Kilian López, under investigation for drug trafficking and arms trafficking. Thus the first one opened case masks of Spain which, four years later, is still under investigation.
This investigation has given rise to new investigations that point to the entrusting of alleged irregular works by the Provincial Council to a network of companies, suspicions that led to the arrest of seven people on Tuesday by the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Guardia Civil, including its president, Javier Aureliano García, and the vice-president, Fernando Giménez, and which culminated this Wednesday with the arrest of Liria – on which a good part of the investigations carried out in this period revolve. time, as research sources confirmed.
The rest of the prisoners, five in total, including the mayor of Fines, Rodrigo Sánchez Simón, Liria’s uncle; and his son, as well as three other people who were released, but who continue the trial as suspects, spent the night in the cells of the Civil Guard Command of Almería, where the secrecy about their situation is total. It is expected that during the morning they will receive a visit from their respective lawyers who will be brought before the court this Thursday, as reported by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA). It will then be assessed whether they will be placed in provisional detention.
Liria was already in prison in the days following his arrest in 2021. Then, Guardia Civil officers found 26,750 euros distributed in three envelopes and several items of clothing at his home. On the same day they also found the councilor’s son with 119,945 euros in cash when he left Liria’s parents’ house.
The former vice president of the Provincial Council is the one who, in the midst of the pandemic, proposed to the Provincial Council to contract a batch of masks and medical supplies with Azor, whose owner, Kilian López, is also related to his uncle, the mayor of Fines, being the nephew of his former sister-in-law, who is also under investigation. The summary contains the WhatsApp conversations between Liria and Giménez in which the former urges the latter to sign that prize: “Your friend with the masks, what language does he speak? Because if he speaks English we can buy a nice handful”, says the latter to the former. Giménez had already been charged in this case and the UCO believes that he collected 10% of the commissions obtained from that allegedly fraudulent contract.
Liria and Giménez shared a specific, alternative vocabulary, a “coded language,” according to the report the UCO sent to the court last May, in which the agents deduce that when they refer to “size 20” or “size 10,” they are referring to the percentage they would receive for irregular contracts. But in addition to their talks, both had another joint chat with the president of the provincial council, who had been summoned Naranjito It also talked about the contract on masks. “Óscar… we have to see what you’ve done with the masks!!!!”, says the president of the popular Almería party, to which he replies: “Yes, but I want you to see what the situation is, friend. I don’t want you to see yourself without materials for the residence…”. “You’re going to make me set fire to the masks,” Aureliano replies, to which Liria responds with a “Jaaaa,” which Aureliano follows with a “Shut up, yaaaaaa.” Liria ends the conversation: “Well man, this is getting really bad.”
These are the only conversations in which García appears mentioned in the summary, but that conversation is very relevant for the PSOE, which serves as a popular accusation, because it shows that the three exchanged information on contracts with a high degree of trust. For this reason, at the end of last October, they asked the judge investigating the case to summon the president of the provincial council so they could testify in court. The request also required that their terminals and communications be intercepted.
The other declarations of the president of the provincial council
This Thursday will be the first time García will testify in court. Until now he had done so before the UCO investigators, on 23 March 2022, and at the Congress of Deputies, on 27 June 2024, as part of the commission of inquiry into the The Koldo case. In both he acknowledged that he had signed the contract for the medical supplies and that he had never met Kilian López. The agents then also asked him about Pulconal, another López company to which the Provincial Council had awarded works for 375,939.05 euros between 2017 and 2021. The president claimed that he had only known that company since the day his third vice president was arrested and that when he asked for minor contracts, which he signed – like all the resolutions approved by the contracting body of the Provincial Council because otherwise it would be “a real abuse”, as he stated in the Congressional commission: the technicians assured him that everything was in order.
But it is precisely those public works contracts that now occupy the investigating judge case masks and for which he ordered the UCO on Tuesday to carry out searches in private properties, premises of public and commercial institutions. In April last year, the inspector had already ordered the Provincial Council of Almería to hand over all the documentation relating to six contracts awarded to OYC Servicios Urbanos, a company that the UCO considers the mayor of Fines, although it is managed through a third person. The judge wanted to clarify whether she had benefited from these works because Pulconal had been informed in advance by the managers of the Provincial Council not to submit offers or, on the contrary, enter into competition with other non-competitive ones and could thus justify the concessions to OYC.
In this part of the investigation, the messages sent by Francisco Liria, brother of the former vice president who has just been arrested again and also accused, and Kilian López are decisive. “Francis. Other jobs at the post offices of Sufli and Ballarque (municipalities of Almeria), we didn’t show up. They only called me from the Provincial Council. Make a note of those two for when they arrive, let’s not show up”, says the second to the first.
Francisco Liria appears as the director of a company through which López attempted to launder the money obtained from the mask contract – one million of the two million paid by the Provincial Council for the material – and is also involved, with his brother, in the acquisition of a Lottery administration in Adra, through another company and another frontman, for which 500,000 euros were paid. The UCO suspects that this purchase was made to launder money from bribes. Nor can we explain the gift of three luxury cars – one for Óscar Liria, another for Francisco and another in the name of another entity also investigated in the conspiracy – nor for the 20,000 euros that the girlfriend of the former vice-president of the Provincial Council, also an accused, gave as a deposit for a house in Huércal-Overa, where she was a councilor of the PP.
Meanwhile, in the Provincial Council of Almería it is the first day in which Ángel Escobar, until now first vice president, assumes the interim presidency of the organization. In the main headquarters of the institution, located in the center of the capital of Almeria, there is a much calmer atmosphere than on Tuesday, when UCO agents searched the offices of the president and second vice-president of the institution. The workers are trying to recover normality by overcoming the after-effects of Monday, experienced with “a lot of pressure” according to one of the employees.
The People’s Party of Almería is blocked and has not yet commented on the arrests. Nobody even answered the doorman at his office in the center of the capital, located on the third floor of Paseo de Almería. Sources from the formation explain that, for the moment, they prefer not to make statements, despite the fact that more than 24 hours have passed since the arrest of their provincial president since 2021, who is still in the cells of the Civil Guard Command of Almería waiting to be brought to justice.
