Antonio Muñoz Cano, brother-in-law of the former PSOE Organization Secretary Santos Cerdán, was hired in September 2019, while serving a sentence for gender violence in third degree prison or semi-freedom, by Servinabar, the Navarre company in which the former socialist leader would have had 45% of the shares and which is considered the epicenter of the alleged corruption plot, according to what he announced. Seville newspaper and EL PAÍS confirmed this in several sources close to the investigation. The details of this hiring, but not Muñoz Cano’s status as a prisoner, were provided by the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Guardia Civil in the latest report delivered to Supreme Court magistrate Leopoldo Puente, in which it detailed the links between the Navarre company and Acciona Construcciones, a company that has received at least five awards from the Ministry of Transport and which is now under suspicion.
The UCO report includes WhatsApp messages exchanged between Joseba Antxon Alonso, alleged companion of the former socialist leader of Servinabar, and a recently indicted Acciona manager, Manuel José García Alconchel, in which they talk about the hiring of Muñoz Cano as an alleged favor of the large construction company. “Thank you Manuel, I won’t forget it!!”, Alonso sent it on 23 September of that year together with the telephone number of Cerdán’s brother-in-law to García Alconchel, then director of Zonar Sur and Africa Construction of the multinational. Days earlier, Muñoz Cano had entered the Social Integration Center (CIS) in Seville to continue serving his sentence in semi-freedom. Having a job or being looking for one is one of the factors that penitentiary institutions evaluate to grant this penitentiary benefit. EL PAÍS tried unsuccessfully this Monday to contact Muñoz Cano by telephone to find out his version of events.
Cerdán’s brother-in-law entered prison in Mallorca on 2 December 2016 to serve a three-year sentence for a crime of mistreatment related to gender violence which was investigated in a court in Inca (Balearic Islands, 35,600 inhabitants). He remained in this penitentiary center until September 2019, when he was transferred to the CIS of Seville to finish serving his sentence in full or semi-freedom. It was finally closed on November 30 of the same year.
The transfer of a prisoner from the Balearic Islands to a penitentiary center in Seville to continue serving his sentence in an open regime is described by several penitentiary sources as “unusual” due to the distance between the two areas, especially if the prisoner does not have family support in the city of destination. A spokesperson for the prisons refused to explain the reasons for this move as “due to data protection law, data on prisoners is not provided”.
The UCO report includes the hiring of Muñoz Cano as another clue to the “economic relations” between Acciona and Servinabar, suspected to have served for the alleged manipulation of the awarding of public works by the Ministry of Transport during the José Luis Ábalos era. Specifically, the agents include it in the rubric “hiring people from the area of Santos (Cerdán)” together, for example, with the use that he and his wife, Francisca Muñoz Cano, Antonio’s sister, made of a card headed to Servinabar for private expenses. The police document states that, according to documentation provided by the General Treasury of Social Security, the Navarre company hired the brother-in-law of the former socialist leader between September 23, 2019 and December 5, 2022, a period for which it received 53,130 euros divided into 69 payments.
According to the agents, this hiring occurred after the exchange of several messages between Alonso, Cerdán’s partner, and the director of Acciona García Alconchel, some exchanged when Muñoz Cano had already served his sentence. “Hello Anchon (sic))! The head of staff is waiting for Antonio. Will he arrive today? A hug”, the latter asked the Basque entrepreneur on January 13, 2020. “He passes the medical examination on Wednesday at 10, then I will call him (the head of staff). Can you give me his contact number since Antonio doesn’t have it? Thanks”, was Alonso’s response. Two weeks later, he contacted the director of the construction company again to clarify that the relative of the then organizational secretary of the PSOE “will work 8 hours a day. We discussed it on Friday”.
The police document adds that on March 19, 2020, Acciona and Servinabar signed a document called “delivery of collaboration and instructions to the collaborating company” in which this contract was linked to the emergency works for the V Centenario Bridge in Seville, one of the awards investigated by Judge Puente. Muñoz Cano was the only Servinabar employee personally assigned to these jobs. In his case, as a skilled worker. In this sense, the agents point out that 11 days later, on March 30, 2020, when serious restrictions on mobility were in force due to the declaration of emergency due to the pandemic, the Ministry of Transport issued a certificate allowing Cerdán’s brother-in-law to join the work.
The renovation works on the Centenary Bridge in the Andalusian capital had an initial cost of 71 million euros, but two years later they rose to over 102 million. According to a June report, Ábalos and his former advisor, Koldo García, also a defendant, were to receive 450,000 euros in bribes for the alleged irregular awarding of that work and two others, which García unsuccessfully claimed from Cerdán, again according to the contents of the recordings entered into the case. When he testified before the Supreme Court on June 30, Cerdán denied any irregular action on his part and justified his interest in accelerating the work of the Seville bridge with the desire to favor the campaign of the socialist candidate in the municipal elections to be held in May of that year, Juan Espadas, so that he could repeat himself as mayor of Seville.
