Councilors purged by Vox denounce that they refused to transfer municipal funds to the party

Vox councilors in town halls of various autonomous communities (Guadalajara, Valencia, Albacete or Orihuela) have denounced that they were pressured to transfer to the central party apparatus in Madrid the public subsidies received by their municipal group in exchange for services that they had not even requested nor did they consider, most of the time, real. All of them refused to do so and have been purged from the candidacies presented by Vox in the elections on Sunday.

The cause of the dissent dates back to the fall of 2020 when, in the midst of the pandemic, a meeting was held between the Vox leadership and its councilors throughout Spain. The presentations —according to the recording to which EL PAÍS has had access— were made by the then general secretary, Javier Ortega-Smith, but the singing voice was led by Pablo Sáez, national treasurer, and Juan José Aizcorbe, deputy general secretary of management. The two financial managers went directly to the point. They had a certain urgency because there were only a few months left to finish the budgetary exercise and they wanted the municipal groups to transfer their funds to the party apparatus.

At the beginning of the legislature, Vox had tried to get its groups in the regional parliaments to directly deposit the public funds they receive into bank accounts controlled by Javier Ortega and other Madrid leaders. Three of the four regional Vox deputies in Murcia refused and that was the trigger for the breakdown of the formation in the only community where he won the general elections of November 2019. The formula was openly illegal, since the parliamentary groups are legally responsible of the use of these public subsidies, destined to defray its operating expenses

“Last year, with the irruption that we had in the institutions, there were things that we did not have planned,” explained the manager in the telematic meeting. “You already know that in the local regime the legislation has more demanding connotations than in the autonomous parliaments or in Congress itself on the issue of subsidies,” he continued. Precisely, one of the star proposals with which Vox broke into Spanish politics – number 82 of its “100 urgent measures for Spain”—was the suppression of public subsidies to the parties, but Aizcorbe excused himself, alleging that “it is very difficult for Vox to impose this will on the town halls.” Therefore, he argued, the grant could not be waived.

What the treasurer and the manager of Vox reproached their councilors for is that, at the end of the previous year, the money that the municipal groups had not spent on their ordinary activity had been returned to the municipal coffers, “with which in the end they did not Neither the Vox political project nor even the citizen has benefited, because it reverts back to the city council”, according to Aizcorbe.

The manager did not explain why the money returned by the municipal groups to their town halls does not benefit the residents, but rather insisted on regretting that they had not delivered it to the party; that is, to him to manage it. “It was really a shame because we lost a lot of money, I don’t want to say the amount; Rather than lose, we stopped bringing in a lot of money, ”he specified. “It was an act of good faith, it was a hazing perhaps. It was an act that some city councils and councils reproached us with: ‘But what are you doing?[devolviendo el dinero no gastado]’ But we have a clear conscience because this is a non-profit institution”.

To prevent this situation from repeating itself in successive years, those responsible for Vox urged their councilors to sign agreements between their municipal groups and the national leadership of the party whereby the latter promised to provide them with a series of services in exchange for being delivered the municipal subsidy that they did not spend. The proposal raised numerous doubts, so the Vox manager and treasurer strove to convince the councilors that this formula was fully legal. They were much less clear when detailing the services that the party apparatus would provide them, beyond those it was already providing, and only insisted that the municipal groups would have more support from the Vox communication team to publicize their initiatives. . Ortega, who was absent during the meeting, returned at the end to encourage the councilors to sign the agreements.

Aizcorbe told the councilors that it was a “synallagmatic contract” –that is, a bilateral agreement with obligations for both parties–, which did not contribute much to clarify the matter. When, in the following weeks, many Vox councilors received the draft of the agreement, with a message urging them to return it signed to the party headquarters, they verified that it was an adhesion contract: Vox offered its councilors a series of generic services – from the preparation of arguments to legal and accounting advice or the use of the party’s own premises – in exchange for a cash payment. What struck them the most is that the payment was fixed and quantifiable, regardless of whether or not such services were provided and the frequency or amount of their use. Although the party officials spoke of a quota proportional to the subsidy received by each group -to serve municipalities that did not have such income–, in some cases the entire public aid was claimed.

Not all Vox councilors complied with this demand. “All the councilors of Spain have been asked [entregar] that municipal allocation that, as you know, belongs solely and exclusively to the municipal groups. There are people who have agreed to something that was not legal and others who have not. I have returned [al ayuntamiento] more than 31,000 euros; more than 80% of the municipal allocation. And it is something that I am very proud of ”, declared the only Vox councilor in the Albacete City Council, Rosario Velasco.

“At Vox they demanded that part of that municipal allocation go to the party. I refused. That’s illegal. [Ese dinero] must be used for operating expenses [del grupo municipal] and never as a party resource or personal compensation. I am very bad because I put the money for the neighbors before the party, which is what Abascal wanted, ”says Antonio de Miguel, spokesman for Voz in the Guadalajara City Council.

For his part, Vicente Montañez, councilor in the Valencia City Council, has denounced that those responsible for Vox tried to get him to pay with the subsidy from the municipal group an invoice of 8,239 euros corresponding to party expenses. “I continue to be required to make payments to the party from the account in which we have the allocation of the municipal group when it is already known that it is not possible to make such payments”, declared the councilor. Asunción Aniorte, mayor of Vox in Orihuela, also refused to transfer the municipal subsidy to the party in exchange for services that she never received. She previously assures that she has not spent a single euro of said allowance and that all the expenses that she has incurred as a councilor she has paid out of her own pocket. None of the four councilors repeats as a candidate.

According to the economic report of the party of 2021, Vox received that year 172,647 euros from 31 municipal groups and 803,282 from eight parliamentary groups (including those of the Congress of Deputies and the Assembly of Madrid) for “collaboration agreements agreed by both parties”. Vox maintains that these agreements are in accordance with the law on the financing of political parties and that their accounts are supervised by the Court of Accounts. In Vox’s budgets for 2022, the income from these agreements already amounted to 1,014,000 euros.