The Government of Aragon hired three consultants in 2021 to help it process the flood of renewable energy projects that were flooding the Aragonese Institute of Environmental Management (Inaga). The three evaluated hundreds of files for photovoltaic and wind installations over two years, but two of them (Satel and Calidad y Servicios) were not allowed to analyze a single one of the projects of the giant of this bubble, Forestalia, which has presented the most of the renewable projects in the region.
Why did you push them away? Because they had previously worked for that business group and therefore would have incurred an incompatibility. Faced with these "incompatibilities", the Inaga distributed the dozens and dozens of Forestalia files between the public company Sarga, which analyzed 60% of the total, and the third contracted consultant, Vea Qualitas, which monopolized 40% of the reports on this business group.
But EL MUNDO has in its possession official documents that prove that the consultant Vea Qualitas also worked on numerous occasions for Forestalia. Vea Qualitas -whose trade name is Vea Global- coordinated the project, health and safety and construction management of the facilities and activity of a Forestalia Renovables pellet complex in Zuera (Zaragoza). The document bears the signature of Silvia Juana Serrano, Director of Engineering of the consultant.
Another example is the Habidite wind farm project, by the company Habidite Energy, owned by Fernando Sol SL, a company owned by Fernando Samper, owner of Forestalia. To give another example, the consultant also designed and directed the work on the Sella La Hacienda Hostel Complex, owned by Fernando Samper, owner of Forestalia.
What the specifications of the Government of Aragon say for the hiring of the three external consultants is that they cannot report files when they have prepared them themselves, "or when there is any type of relationship of interest with the person, entity or group promoter of the file". Y Vea Qualitas has been a supplier to Forestalia since at least 2012.
Not only that. In 2020, the same year that Inaga received the Forestalia Arapellet project, prepared by Vea Global, the CEO of this company tweeted that she was at an informative breakfast "with speakers like Pérez Cebrián, from our preferred client Forestalia." The relationship of interest with the wind and solar giant becomes evident.
On Tuesday, when this newspaper published the first evidence on the incompatibilities of the other two consultancies, Satel and Calidad y Estudios, the director of Inaga, Jesús Lobera, assured in a press conference that no irregularity had occurred and that all the Forestalia files were made by "Sarga and another company called Vea Qualitas." "60% of the Forestalia files have been processed by Sarga and the rest by the other company that I have just named". And he explained that this was so because the other two had declared incompatibility.
In fact, he assured that the Inaga proceeded to "verify that all these companies were compatible with the orders that were made to them." Literally.
So, the problem is that Vea Qualitas declared itself compatible when it had exactly the same problem as the other two consultancies? The Government of Aragon refers "to the contract's own technical specifications to issue reports and environmental assessments in the field of renewable energy where the compatibility of the companies is detailed in reference to the files that they had to analyze." "He always had to record a certificate of compatibility with the file he was analyzing, as required of the three consultants in each of the files they reported," add sources from the Government of Aragon. This newspaper has accessed one of those certificates, which is signed by the consulting firm's own Engineering Director.
It should be noted that as of June 2022, the government of Aragon increased the number of Forestalia files that were awarded to Vea Qualitas. "And we continue to work" with them, Lobera said Tuesday.
This Thursday, but before knowing this information, the president of Aragon, Javier Lambán, said that "if it were verified" that one of the consultants that evaluated renewable energy projects for his Government was both judge and party, for working for one of the companies that they evaluated, he himself "would go to the Prosecutor's Office."
The doubts about the Aragonese Institute for Environmental Management "are interested, with a very clear electoral nuance, and no one has shown a single irregularity," Lambán stressed. "Until now there is talk of suspicions and value judgments," she asserted.
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