The wind plot of corruption spreads its tentacles in Maragatería

 

Although the business and clean energy premiums were always under the magnifying glass of suspicion, no one in Maragatería could guess that in that month of July 2006, when the Board resolved the administrative authorization of the 'Argañoso' Wind Farm, and signed off on its approval, the Deputy Minister of Economy, Rafael Delgado Núñez would be charged by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office 11 years later.

 

The energy generating facility is located between Argañoso, La Maluenga, Viforcos and Rabanal del Camino, and it is accessed through a path that connects the A-6 motorway with the town of Foncebadón. This magnificent natural setting located in the Montes de León became one of the parts where the great wind macro-park was cut, which ended up spreading over a wide geographical area between the Manzanal and the municipal terms of Santa Colomba de Somoza and Lucillo, and which had projects that were never built, such as the Quintanilla de Combarros wind farm. 

 

In that month of July 2006, the Board authorized the company Energía Global Castellana SA to build the 'Argañoso' Wind Farm' with 11 wind turbines and 22 MW of power in the municipalities of Santa Colomba de Somoza and Torre del Bierzo. The electricity generated by the wind turbines is collected by underground distribution lines that flow into the collection substation located in the area 'Las encrucijadas'

 

Energía Global Castellana SA was the firm shared by Iberdrola and San Cayetano Wind, the company founded by Alberto Esgueva, who was CEO of Excal until 2006, the public company of the Board dedicated to promoting exports.

 

The 'Argañoso' park was part of the investments framed by Iberdrola in its 2008-2010 Strategic Plan, which contemplated allocating 460 million euros in the area of renewable energy in order to install a total of 340 MW of additional wind in Castilla y León.

 

 

The process to build the wind farm in the municipality of Santa Colomba de Somoza began in June 1999 by the companies Gamesa SA and Research and Development of Renewable Energies ( IDER ) SL. However, it took seven years for the 'Argañoso' park to receive the final approval. What had happened from 1999 to 2006 to make the process so long? And why was it not finally either of the two companies in charge of carrying out the project?

 

In the answer to those two questions is the issue in which, presumably, the actions of the commissions that were denounced by the Tax Agency in 2015 was entangled and which has been the basis of the complaint filed by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office. Energía Global Castellana SA was created in 2004, the year from which 18 León projects, Soria and Burgos that had been planned for years ( the oldest of them was precisely that of 'Argañoso' ) received the final push for approval. It was precisely in 2004 when the Deputy Minister of Economy, Rafael Delgado, who appears at the center of the plot, ordered the publication of an instruction so that the administrative authorizations were no longer reliant on the territorial decisions of the Board but depended directly according to the Confidential, a newspaper that had access to the complaint. "The illegality of this investigation is highlighted in the report of the General State Intervention of January 16, 2017, issued at the request" of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.

 

 

The investigation carried out by the Tax Agency, reflected in a 2015 report, concluded on “ the organized existence of a group of people and societies with distribution of functions and maintained over time ", which they collected, as it has been known two years later in the Anticorruption complaint, 80 million euros to speed up the processing of wind farms.

 

The Tax Agency details in its report that in that organization were "public authorities of Castilla y León", "the electricity companies that were going to do the installation and operation of the parks", "the intermediaries promoting the wind farms that obtained the precise administrative authorizations "and" the companies owned by local entrepreneurs who, without valid economic reasons, they received the transfers of funds or shares "for an amount of 80 million euros.

 

The complaint from the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has been filed against 21 people accused of lying, money laundering, fiscal crime and influence peddling, among them are the former Minister of Economy, Rafael Delgado, right hand of former adviser Tomás Villanueva, also against Alberto Esgueva and managers of the companies that built the parks, as well as against four Iberdrola managers and the owners of the construction company Collosa.