Beyond Acciona: the other construction companies in the Cerdán case report

MadridAcciona, the multinational created and controlled by the Entrecanales family, has been in the spotlight since Wednesday due to its appearance in the UCO report on the Cerdán case. Specifically, the spotlight has been on Acciona's construction business; allegedly, the network formed by Koldo García, José Luis Ábalos, and Santos Cerdán received illegal commissions in exchange for helping the company win. public works contracts.

The company headed by José Manuel Entrecanales issued a statement this Thursday in which it expressed "ignorance, surprise and concern" about the events investigated by the Civil Guard and indicated the opening of an internal investigation. "Appropriate legal measures." And the truth is that, despite the fact that the construction company has made headlines, it is not the only one that appears in the report. The almost 500 pages also feature two of the firms with the longest track record in Spain in terms of the execution of public infrastructure in the state: Ferrovial and Sacyr.

Ferrovial and Sacyr

To begin with, the construction company Ferrovial, chaired by Rafael del Pino, and which In 2023, the company moved its headquarters from Madrid to the Netherlands., appears in the report for having won, together with Acciona, two bids from Adif that are under scrutiny by the Civil Guard for allegedly generating an economic benefit in the scheme of up to 550,000 euros through commissions.

One of them is the work that affects, according to the UCO report, the Santiago El Mayor neighborhood in Murcia, and which involves burying railway tracks. This work was tendered in August 2018 and Ferrovial Agroman – as of 2020 it will be called Ferrovial Construcción SA – is bidding with Acciona through a temporary joint venture (UTE). After submitting the second lowest bid and avoiding reckless bidding (when the bid is so low that the ability to fulfill the contract is called into question), the Ferrovial and Acciona joint venture obtained a technical score of 36.17/40.00. The contract was awarded in May 2019 for €158 million.

The Civil Guard is focusing on this case because, in a conversation dated November 18, 2020, transcribed in the report, Koldo García tells José Luis Ábalos that he is owed payments for the tenders for "Sant Feliu [the Catalan branch of the Cerdán case] and El Mayor." "Sant Feliu and El Mayor are 350," the report states.

In the second contract, also tendered in 2018, something similar occurs. Ferrovial, together with Acciona, are once again participating through a joint venture (UTE) in a competition to build a Mediterranean Corridor platform for high-speed rail on the section between Pulpí (Murcia) and Vera (Almería). They submitted the second highest bid among 14 interested companies and were awarded the contract in January 2019 for €121 million. The Civil Guard links the award to a conversation—in 2022, when José Luis Ábalos was no longer head of the Ministry of Transport—between Koldo García and Santos Cerdán in which the former acknowledged having already received €550,000 from two projects in Murcia. One is the Santiago El Mayor project, and the other is the platform for this project, according to the UCO investigation. When asked by this newspaper, Ferrovial declined to comment.

Ferrovial, however, doesn't only appear in these two joint ventures with Acciona. It also appears in a conversation in which Sacyr, another of the main construction companies in the state, chaired by Manuel Manrique, is explicitly mentioned.

In this case, in April 2019, Koldo García informed José Luis Ábalos that Isabel Pardo de Vera, then president of Adif, had indicated that five major projects needed to be awarded to large construction companies "due to their complexity." Koldo García cites Acciona, Ferrovial, and Sacyr. "Isabel [Pardo de Vera] tells me that these five [projects] should be awarded or... Acciona, Sacyr, Ferrovial [...] I already have one Sacyr, one for 95 [million]," the advisor tells Ábalos. In the report, the Civil Guard does not attribute any specific project to this possible offer, nor whether it was carried out or if there was any associated financial compensation.

Seven more construction companies

In addition to these three major names, seven other companies linked to the construction industry also appear. ARA has contacted all of them for an assessment of the report's content, but none have responded. Obras SA, Ortiz Construcciones y Proyectos, Servinabar 2000, and Noran Coop. are among the joint ventures.

The practice of joint ventures (UTEs) in Spain is legally recognized, but that doesn't mean it's free of controversy. A UTE basically allows different companies to join forces temporarily (for the duration of the project) in a complex public tender in an attempt to score higher and win.

On more than one occasion, competition authorities, both at the national level (the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC)) and internationally, have targeted the use of this mechanism for public infrastructure tenders. Organizations such as the CNMC have argued on more than one occasion that the need for UTEs is not always justified, so their use can end up being instrumental, that is, a means to secure a public contract, even if there is no real economic, technological, or capacity-based need behind them. They also pointed to their "premeditated" formation, which directly affects competition.