The Efial case has engulfed Tortosa: emails between the consultancy and the former municipal government have been made public.

BarcelonaJust over a year ago lThe National Court sent four former mayors of Convergència to trial. for the Efial corruption plot. Then the Town councils of Ametlla de Mar and Ascó, Torredembarra and Vandellòs were judicially implicated in the case of illicit contracting that embezzled more than 8.7 million euros in fourteen Catalan municipalitiesOf all of them, Tortosa is the third most affected city council, with one million euros stolen, but so far no member of the then council has been investigated. The newspaper Ebredigital On Tuesday, the Ministry of Public Health published various fragments of compromised emails between the president of Efial, Antonio Martos, and the then president of the municipal urban planning management company (GUMTSA) and councilor for Urban Planning, Meritxell Roigé, who would later become mayor of the city.

The messages exchanged between Roigé and Martos, the only defendant linked to urban planning in Tortosa, come just the same week that the National Court accepted the private accusation of the current municipal government for investigating the corruption case between 2008 and 2016. The objective of the executive, made up of Movem Tortosa-PSC and Esquerra, is to recover the 1,050,130 euros from the consulting firm in the city of Baix Ebre.

"Good afternoon Meritxell, sorry to bother you again," is how the email that Antonio Martos sent to Meritxell Roigé in August 2012 begins, which appears in the police proceedings sent by the Civil Guard to the investigating court number 4 of A. "With the pool thing, I forgot that the Efial contract ends on August 3 and, therefore, it should be put out to tender again. If you agree, we can prepare documentation to process it as urgent with a reduction in the tender price and set it at 198,900 (euros), which could be improved downwards, and we would invite SL, KPMG, Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers," the email continues. This is the response that the president of Efial sent after Roigé asked him to "prepare the documentation" for the new tender, "setting the amount [...] and indicating to the president of GUMSTSA the companies that should be invited from September 2010. 2012 was granted to Efial. The negotiated award procedure took place without publicity and for a final amount of 189,700 euros, according to the auditor's report. "Efial Consultoría, through Mr. Martos, could influence the decisions made within the public entity when processing tenders, such as the choice of procedure, the cost of the service and the companies to be invited," states the investigation initiated at the request of Examining Magistrate's Court No. 4. These concerted practices between the contract between Efial Consultoría and other companies," concludes the police report.

This is one of the public contracts Efial benefited from, thanks to a scheme that circumvented government control and public procurement regulations, pocketing a million euros. The start of the relationship between Martos's company and Tortosa City Council dates back to 2008, when the consultancy firm began working with the Municipal Public Services Company (EMSP), the municipal urban planning management company (GUMTSA), and Tortosa Sport SL, a year after Ferran Bel became mayor.

Tortosa City Council files a private prosecution suit.

Two weeks after the municipal government was formed, in early June, the CUP (Party of the Unity of Tortosa) presented a motion demanding that the new City Council appear as a private prosecutor with the intention of investigating the City Council's relationship with the consulting firm Efial during the Ferran Bel administration, when Meritxell Roigé was First Deputy Mayor and a councilor for the U (United Left). The motion received the support of the new municipal government made up of Movem Tortosa-PSC (Party of the Unity of Tortosa) and Esquerra (Republic of Tortosa), and this Monday the National Court sent the order accepting the appearance as a private prosecutor.

The mayor of Tortosa, Jordi Jordan, regretted that "the previous government, Junts per Tortosa, did not appear during the investigation, which would have allowed for more details to be known and expanded the number of those investigated." The city council is currently finalizing the indictment, which is expected to be submitted before March 14. On the other hand, Meritxell Roigé, current spokesperson for Junts per Tortosa, wanted to point out that, for now, no one from Tortosa City Council is under investigation in connection with the Efial case. "It's clear they want to drag out the issue, probably because they are interested in hiding their inability to manage the city," notes Meritxell Roigé, the mayor of the previous term.