The Ciudadanos politician awarded the promoter a contract of 9 million euros for the construction of rental housing
MADRID, 24 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Vía Ágora has decided not to go ahead with the hiring of the former Madrid City Council Urban Planning Mariano Fuentes, from Ciudadanos, after detecting that he is subject to temporary administrative restrictions.
This is, specifically, the restriction contained in article 15 of Law 3/2015 of the General State Administration, which prohibits the hiring of public offices for a period of two years by a private company if it has been affected by its decisions.
In this case, in February 2023, the Urban Development Area of the City Council of the capital, led by Mariano Fuentes, awarded Vía Ágora one of the lots in the first competition for surface rights for the construction of more than 2,000 affordable rental homes in 11 districts of the city.
The municipal group Más Madrid announced its intention to denounce Fuentes before the Prosecutor’s Office for breaching this law, since a few days before his dismissal, on June 8, he signed the formalization of this contract valued at 9 million euros, according to the minutes consulted by Europa Press.
At the beginning of July, Vía Ágora announced the appointment of Fuentes as director of investor relations “to face new projects in the promoter”, according to the company.
At that time, the president of Vía Ágora, Juan Antonio Gómez Pintado Rodríguez de Segovia, who was also president of the association of real estate developers in Madrid (Asprima) until last year, highlighted the former Ciudadanos councilor for “having managed to position the capital as a benchmark in urban planning.”
Fuentes is a technical architect from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and a building engineer from the European University. He has completed an MBA at the European Business School and an Expert Public Leadership course in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Deusto. His salary at the Madrid City Council in 2022 amounted to 101,811 euros.
After this controversy, the company has rectified and will not carry out his appointment, which in any case was scheduled for next September and had not yet been formalized pending a verification process, which has already concluded.
“Vía Ágora wants to show that it has complied at all times with current legislation and in particular with the rules applicable to the contracting procedures to which it has resorted, fully subject to the principles of competition, transparency, equality and non-discrimination”, the company has defended.
