EH parliamentarians Bildu Josu Estarrona and Unai Fernández de Betoño on Thursday denounced the alleged irregularities committed by ETS in the award of a study on the railway network of Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa.

ETS awarded EUR 1.2 million last May to the company Sener in a public competition, although representatives of EH Bildu explained that since February they knew it and certified it before the notary. Ladies and gentlemen, in the invitation to tender issued by the Government company on 2 February, they confirmed that the document of the technical specifications (pdf) contains "contract sener": "Apparently, they have been forgotten to delete the metadata from the pdf and that information is clearly shown in the document's properties," said Unai Fernández de Betoño. They even think that the first letters of the person in these documents are those of a worker of the company Sener.

In his view, this shows that the tender was made "ad hoc" for the hiring of the services of the company Sener and that the works were awarded irregularly by ETS in 1.2 million euros (the initial tender was 1.5 million euros), knowing in advance who would deliver the money. Six companies were submitted to the tender, and in particular Sener won the competition, although objectively with a lower score, due to fastening criteria.

"All the signs indicate that the plea has not been produced by the Basque Government, but by the company Sener, which is not normal because it violates the principle of equality," said Fernández de Betoño in a statement. In particular, the Member pointed out that recently the National Committee on Markets and Competition, the CNMC, sanctioned 22 consultants for fraud in public contracts with a fine of EUR 6.3 million for acting as cartels.

"If this case is confirmed, it would be very serious, it would demonstrate that the fraudulent practices sanctioned by the CNMC are widespread in public procurement, that some administrations, institutions and policy makers are aware of these practices and that there is a degree of combination," said Josu Estarrona. In this respect, they have announced that they will ask the Transport Minister of the Basque Government, Iñaki Arriola, for explanations on this matter.

ETS: -The plea was old.

In response to this complaint, Euskal Trebide Sarea published a statement, as reported by EiTB in its Spanish edition of its website, and explained that the document was based on an earlier "old specification" that was nothing but "an internal error".

In addition, he has assured that the first letters in which the documents appear are of an STD officer and not of a Sener worker, as the Abertzale parliamentary group has said. In this regard, he accused EH Bildu of "drawing interested conclusions" on the General Budget proposal.