AINHOA INTXAURRANDIETA:

Born in Lezo in 1973, she lives there. He is an Administrative Council of Municipalities, of his own initiative. He was a member of EH Bildu in Lezo between 2011 and 2015 and is also a member of this legislature. As a councillor, he was president of the Commonwealth of San Marcos and subsequently president of the GHK and the Waste Consortium.

The current GHK will take you to court for the closure of the incineration project in 2013: the assembly has taken the decision and the proposal has been made by its president and MEP, José Ignacio Asensio. But you said, “This is not a waste problem, and this is not a Gipuzkoa problem.” So what is being done in this trial?

At the trial, which is to be held in Madrid, there is much at stake and it does not just affect Errazkin and me. On the one hand, there is a personal revenge against the two, and this is serious, because all the steps and decisions taken, studied legally, were taken in compliance with the law until the end. On the other hand, and I believe this is the most serious thing, they want us to be tied hands for the next legislatures. It is well known that infrastructures that are “strategic” for them, in most cases, give rise to social rejection.

These infrastructures are often very expensive, with hundreds and billions of euros (such as the TAV), causing enormous damage to the environment, and also with public money private companies and banks are enriched, indebting citizens. And what they want to avoid is the abandonment of the infrastructures they consider “strategic”. That is to say, that in the forthcoming elections, even if different governments succeed, these Pharaonic infrastructures cannot be touched.

This is what will be judged in Madrid: if the citizens, the members of the parties we think differently, have the legitimacy to paralyse infrastructures that generate huge profits for the economic elite. In this case it is very clear, right? The PNV and the PSE have denounced us in Madrid and in the court there, the instructor of our case is Margarita Mariscal De Ghent, minister of justice of pp, when Aznar was president. It is clear to us that legally we did things very well and that the issue is therefore political.

They've faced both of them, but why? If in 2013 the decision to paralyse the incinerator’s project was taken by the GHK assembly (representing municipalities), why not process the whole assembly?

We both came out in the photo announcing that we had reached an agreement with the companies and that the incinerator's contract had been broken. I think more than one was hurt by that picture. We demonstrated that public administration is above business and in defence of the interests of citizens, and that did damage. On the other hand, if it opposes all the junters, they should submit more than twenty complaints, which would mean that they were reported in more than twenty localities in Gipuzkoa. I think they feared the response of the citizens, that the anger would be somehow more “moderate” if they were directed against two than if they were directed against 23 people.

That, however, had to be justified in some way and, as paper holds it all, at the Madrid Court of Auditors they said that the other junters had to vote what we were saying, because party discipline is strict and you cannot vote the opposite. In other words, the rest of the junters voted in favour of breaking the incinerator’s contract, because they could not vote against what we proposed. Completely ridiculous.

Tell me what happens when a party goes into running a public institution run by another party for many years. What did they find in the GHK?

On the one hand, we realized that a lot of documentation was missing. The minutes of some major meetings referred to others, but the minutes of those meetings were missing.

On the other hand, despite encountering wonderful people, we also found technicians, administrators, etc. They were always willing to help. The goal was to complicate things and to work that way is not easy.
A technician, for example, had to prepare specifications for the award of a contract, as the previous contract had been exhausted. The contract would be a truck service for the transportation of organic waste, but since we were building Epele's composting plant, the contract would be very short, one year long. When he presented us the pleadings, the price seemed very expensive, scandalous. But when I started studying them, I asked the technician about the trucks from the previous contract. I told him, in the contract of the previous six years, that we were paying depreciation for the lorries that were used and that, therefore, I understood that in the paid part, the lorries were from GHK. The depreciation of the lorries meant that every month the company was paid to collect them. It wasn't a rental. According to the technician, depreciation was a sort of rent and I didn't. We transferred the matter to the legal service and after in-depth analysis of the previous contract, they said it was right. Thus, with what was paid in the previous six years, a full trailer and half of the two trailers were from GHK. There was just a change of name. By letting this technician know the words of the lawyers, he replied that until then things did not do that. Things were done as he had said. I told him that until then the trucks were paid to the companies and at the end of the contract they were given away, and he did not deny it. If we had not been on this and other contracts, the trucks would have been given to the companies. This technician is now awarded by the PNV.

I have already said that there was a lack of documentation when we entered. We note that the Integrated Environmental Authorisation granted by the Basque Government, which is granted in order to protect the environment, was not in line with the project to be built. But the minutes of the meetings held with the technicians of the Basque Government were also missing. We had many meetings with technical staff and staff to find out what documentation was missing in paper and in digital format.

The meetings held with a technician paid off. This person, who was going to be the director of the incineration plant, told us how things were done, how they were signed, because he participated in the meetings he held in the government. When we asked him about the documentation, he told us that he had copies on his work computer and because he was late that day, the next day he would record them on a CD. The next morning, this person went earlier than ever to work, at seven in the morning, and he walked into his office saying he would give us the CD in hand. At midday, though he walked past the door of our office, he sent us a message on the phone saying that he had suffered an accident in the family and that he had had to leave work, and that the recording would give us the next day. The next day he sent us another SMS to tell us he was sick. Seeing this, we went to his office and realized that the computer was missing. He took it. We called him on the phone to ask him for the computer and he answered that he didn't know where he was, that he would look at whether he was in the car or not, and that he would call five minutes. So far.

We denounce him and, 15 days later, he himself left the computer in court. A week after we denounced, it was he who filed the complaint against GHK’s trust charges. He accused us of kidnappings, torture, ill-treatment, etc. He had neither feet nor heads. Luckily, many judges also saw it this way and lost all the resources and trials. It was a year and a half before we acquired the famous computer and handed it over to one of the most expert forensics in the Spanish state to study what happened on the computer. His report was very clear: on that day he went to work earlier than ever, at seven and thirteen minutes, the removal of files stored on the computer began. It removed 70,000 files, making them unrecoverable. We were only able to recover 149 files and given their importance, it can be suspected that those that were removed were very important.

Later on, what is clear is that it was not useless for him to file a complaint against us, as he managed to delay the trial against him, since for a year and a half no instruction was made against him for the theft of the computer. The issue remained in court while he appealed against the judgments and, as a result of the 2015 elections, PNV and PSE returned to the majority in the GHK. And one of the first decisions of the first meeting of the Management Board was to withdraw the complaint against this person. Everyone will have to draw conclusions, but it is quite clear what happened, right?

What did the information recovered in those 149 files teach you?

There are two types of infrastructure: the incineration plant and the energy recovery plant. But what's the difference between them? An energy recovery plant “recycles” waste by transforming it into energy. An incinerator works like a landfill, instead of throwing waste into a moat, they burn. The incineration plant in Zubieta had permits for energy recovery. The European Investment Bank granted the loan for the construction of a recovery plant, not for an incineration plant. How do the two types of infrastructure differ? By applying a mathematical formula, it distinguishes the amounts of energy obtained. One of those 149 documents was an Excel book. On the first page, applying this mathematical formula, the result showed that it was a recovery plant. In the second sheet they added “forgotten” data in the previous formula, to the energy produced by the plant, that the plant eliminated the amount of energy needed for its operation. The conclusions of this second page therefore showed that it was an incinerator. They didn't have permission to do it, and they were already up to date.

Well, this is just one example, we found three or four documents of great importance.

There is a lot of talk about illegitimate debt. The complaint argues, on the one hand, that you generated public debt because the termination of the incinerator’s construction contract forced the emperors to be compensated and, on the other hand, because, according to the arguments of the complaint, the swaps became speculative when the project was paralysed, because they had to continue to pay, even if they had not used the loan.

Yes, the situation is Kafkian, but power (with capital letters) works like this. If you touch the business, you will respond to everything they have provoked. In this case, that's what you're looking for. I, beyond words, will tell you chronologically how things were done with the documents.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) granted a large part of the loan and a smaller loan from Caixa and Banesto. However, the EIB established a number of conditions for granting the loan, one of which was that it was a “loan cover contract used”. What does this mean? As he used the loan, he forced them to have an “insurance” that keeps the interests of the money that has been used fixed. It is important, what the EIB demanded was insurance on the money used. On the contrary, the representatives of the PNV and the PSE, purchased from Caixa and Banesto, did not cover the money that had been used. Whether or not the money borrowed was used, the monthly payment was EUR 600,000. They would also be paid if the incinerator had been made, but it was known that, even if the incinerator was not built, it would be paid on a monthly basis. And those who approved and signed this were not Iñaki Errazkin and I, PNV Environment Deputy and GHK President (Carlos Ormazabal).

In February 2011, the Caixa carried out a “Convenience Test” to Carlos Ormazabal to determine their recruitment capacity. Among other issues, they ask you if you are willing to lose and answer yes. When given to choose between different losses, he is willing to admit all kinds of losses.

In view of the Caixa, Carlos Ormazabal concludes that he has no capacity to understand the product and advises him not to sign. After a week, return to another test that changes your grade. For a week, it appears that financial contracts acquire the ability to understand and are called “wholesaler”.

Then he signed the Swaps. At the time of signature, the GHK recorded losses of EUR 5,6 million for its mere signature. And as you know, they celebrated this. Political representatives of the PNV, managers of Caixa and Banesto, approached a well-known restaurant of angulas and paid for it with public money. In other words, the Caixa and Banesto, regardless of whether or not they make the incinerator, whether they leave the money lent to the GHK or not, won tens of millions of euros with that contract and also invited the angle to eat with the public money that is from all of us.

But Ormazabal will not appear before the judge. Why didn't they bring him to trial?
Yes, it is paradoxical to bring to court those who prevented the terrible indebtedness, but that makes us see how the institutions are, who they look at and to whom some institutions submit, right?

In any case, we take them to court. We denounce banks against swaps and advise the PWC. That was also a disgrace. Swap’s contracts, in addition to missing many mandatory paragraphs, were not complied with with these Swaps as requested by the EIB, as I said earlier. Many other institutions, such as the City Council of Eibar, have managed to get swaps annulled in the city courts. In our case, it was not possible, because the representatives of the PNV defended in the courts the swaps and banks and said that everything was well done and that they would do the same again. Therefore, from the very beginning, the same person who linked us to pay or not to pay the loan, said that it was well signed in the courts. And what was in his hand at the time, the swap, in his power, became impossible.

After the judgment against the GHK, they did not want to appeal and now, to those of us who tried to avoid paying for these products, they are being asked to report them and to be paid by us. It takes a face!

Why did they file a complaint against banks and PWC advice and not personally against Ormazabal? Isn't that what you've done with you? If the judgment against you creates jurisprudence, does not a rather dangerous door open for the public office of all political parties?

Our goal has never been a personal revenge. Our goal has always been to save tens of millions of euros to Gipuzkoan society and the only way to do so was for a judge to cancel the swaps and report to the banks. In addition, the banks sold a product that was not required of them and without specifying in the contracts the conditions to be fulfilled.

What exactly do they attribute to you?

On the one hand, we are accused of swaps, although we did not sign from the outset these products were harmful, and I myself filed a lawsuit in court to have this product abandoned. Now, those who signed the swaps and those who defended in the courts want us to pay them ...

On the other hand, we are also being asked to pay compensation to companies. It also has something to do with that. One week before the 2011 elections, a contract was signed for the construction of the Zubieta incinerator. They knew when the contract was signed, because a year earlier an engineering report had communicated it to them, it was going to have problems with the incineration plant, as it was oversized and not enough waste was generated in Gipuzkoa. They were recommended to sign agreements with other countries to bring waste from outside. Despite knowing that it was oversized, the construction contract was signed in May 2011. Within three months of the signing, in August, the companies had to submit the final core project. In the 2011 elections, Bildu achieved the majority in most of the Gipuzkoan institutions, as well as in the Diputación and GHK. In June 2011, we took on new positions both in the City Hall and in the Council. In the Community and in the GHK, on the contrary, the process is longer and no changes have yet taken place. The representatives of the GHK were therefore in office until the change occurred. In August, the FCC companies, Serbitzu Elkartea, Altuna and Uria and Murias submitted the project to the Management Board of the GHK in office, and since it was somewhat bottomless and the project did not comply with the principles defined in the contract, they did not accept it. At that time, the failure of the companies to comply with the contract could result in the termination of the relationship with them at no cost.
The Environment Deputy of Bildu, Juan Karlos Alduntzin, after the designations of the future GHK President, told the GHK President, Carlos Ormazabal, in office, that the generation of waste in Gipuzkoa had greatly decreased and until the social and territorial needs were analysed to leave the contract. However, Ormazabal gave the companies a second chance and granted them a one-month extension to resubmit the project.

In September, therefore, they resubmitted the project. Once again, it did not meet the minimum requirements. The lehendakari of the GHK again asked, in the short term, to leave it to the incumbent PNV President, to study the needs of the territory and to ensure that decisions are taken calmly. At that time, failure on the part of companies to fulfil the contract for the second time could lead to the termination of the contract without charging a penny. Once again, companies are given a third chance and they are given a second extension, one more month, to present the project properly. Then, and tightened by the deadlines, GHK technicians began developing the project in collaboration with the companies. Among them, the technician who carried the computer. He is currently working on one of them.

In October, a week before the president of the GHK proposed by Bildu, the companies present the project and although they show their shortcomings, the functioning GHK takes for granted. And Carlos Ormazabal signs. This firm, after so many opportunities and so many extensions, assumes that the companies have complied with the contract, so, although it is an oversized infrastructure, despite the fact that the needs of the territory have changed, despite the fact that there has been a huge indebtedness for the country (not forgetting the damage to the environment and therefore to health), in case the contract was broken, the companies were entitled to compensation. This was what had happened. When we entered the GHK, we had to start building an infrastructure that would also be economically damaging, and if we did not, we were shielded from compensation. What were we going to do? Besides harming the environment and health, would it generate enormous indebtedness for Gipuzkoa, although I knew that before building it was going to be deficient?

What do you have to say in your defense? Did you, as chairman of GHK, have the legitimacy to paralyse the incinerator, with no majority of Bildu opposed to the incinerator project at the General Meetings of Gipuzkoa?

We behaved legally as excellent: we followed the procedures laid down by law for the termination of contracts and we paid the minimum compensation that could be paid. We don't violate the Foral Norm. Furthermore, if the GHK President had the competence to sign the contract, how could it be that the GHK President did not have the competence to break this? The judgment of the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country, issued last month, recognises that we had the competence to cancel the contract, the competition was ours and not that of anyone else.

What is the greatest penalty you can receive and what do you expect from a judgment before the Spanish Court of Auditors?

The greatest penalty we can receive is a fine of several million euros. The figure of EUR 41 million was spread through the press, but even though it is a tremendous barbarity, more is still being demanded. These EUR 41 million are the sum of what has so far been paid for swaps and compensation paid to companies. In addition, they are asking us for all the damage that from now on is caused by swaps, I do not know, can amount to some EUR 40 million more, or more. However, if we are in those figures, with 40 million or 80, I do not think there is much difference. They can seize our assets, that is, housing and lifelong wages. But let's not get ahead. We'll see what happens. Although I do not have much hope in the courts in Madrid, I am so clear that we did things well and that we avoided a terrible damage to Gipuzkoa, which I am optimistic about and awaiting what happens.

Politicians, banks, law firms, a whole team of technical officials, companies, lobbies... What unites them, what is their goal? Who sends at the base?

I have already said before that I normally put power in capital letters. When I say power, I'm not talking about governments. I mean what really has power. And these are the ones who command above all else. In the end, capital is what we have above all in this society. Banks decide, multinationals decide. We are talking about the way in which public money is spent on private hands. It is terrible to enrich the citizens, the municipalities, a few who are frivolous in debating us.

The bad thing is that these contracts of EUR million are signed and accepted by politicians, which in addition to selling it is for the common good.

In the medium term what public policies do you expect to know in Hego Euskal Herria?

They also privatize basic services on the pretext that they work better. We know that this is a lie, that what is behind it is an entrepreneur who instead of returning his benefits to society fills his pockets, but they also have a huge front to say that it is for the good of all of us.

They say they are “strategic” infrastructures, but every day we see that these “strategic” infrastructures are in many cases useless. We have a Super Surra that does not go with cars, they want to build waste incinerators, the TAV is scandalous, at first they justified the trucks being taken off the roads, now they say that it is not going to be used for goods, it is not going to save time between capitals, it is not going to have a connection with other capitals... and all the same. Is this a “strategic” infrastructure? To provoke the massacre of the Environment and indebtedness of the population for a lifetime. They are strategic, simply because they follow a strategy to enrich entrepreneurs and bank owners.

Is the policy that can be made in public institutions increasingly related? What path is left to politicians who want to transform society?

I'm a very positive person, and I want to think, with everybody's work, that things are going to change. But it is imperative that we all get involved in this, it is everyone’s task. The situation is not easy, and I believe that many red lines cross with this complaint against us. There's a lot at stake, and not just the lifelong economic punishment of Iñaki Errazkin and I. Beyond that goes the whistle. With this denunciation, they want to make strategic projects untouchable. So that no one thinks that things can be done differently and that infrastructures, projects, projects that are detrimental to the public can be stopped. Their objective, since they cannot control the electoral results, is that at least the projects that have left them tied can go ahead. Let no one dare to oppose these projects. That is the most serious of all. We cannot afford it.

If the pressure of the lobbies is not limited, and with your judgment it adds to the economic penalties imposed on them in a personal capacity, what characteristics or conditions do you think a politician needs to implement the courageous measures that have been committed in the programme?

I don't know if courage is needed. I believe that what is absolutely necessary to be elected is to believe in the construction of a country. The people are living and work for it and defend it. But it is not easy, because the interests of the citizens often clash with the powers I mentioned earlier, but we have to stand firm and not fail to do what they want. Those of us who have or have had different responsibilities must defend the interests of the citizens. That must be the compass of everything that moves in politics. And certainly, working for a living and free people with illusion.

How do you see the issue of the incinerator today?

I am concerned about the current incinerator project. Only representatives of the PNV and the PSE are on the board of directors of the GHK. Although EH Bildu is the second force of Gipuzkoa, they don't let us participate. At the beginning of the legislature, five members of the PNV, five members of the PSE and I were invited to sit on the Management Board. First I went to the two management boards and, without notice, I put my position to another. Because they're doing things, they seem to want no witnesses, and that worries me. The treatment of waste has been privatised and from now on, if things do not change, we have joined the Chinese company Urbaser. At the age of 35, Guipuzkoan money will necessarily be the economic benefit of a Chinese company.