2023-08-30 22:20:47
1,064,483.61 euros. It is the invoice that the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) has paid on official trips of its members since the body is in office. This situation dates back more than four and a half years as a result of the blockade imposed by the Popular Party, which is now maintained by its top leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, whom Pedro Sánchez unsuccessfully asked to negotiate the renewal this Wednesday. This amount, collected in the website of the organization, includes the payment of plane and train tickets, hotel nights, meals in restaurants, transfers in taxis and vehicles with drivers (whether private or from the State vehicle fleet) and stays in the airport authority lounges between December 2018 and June 2023.
A group of conservative members is consolidated as an extension of the PP in the Judiciary
Further
Although its essential function of making discretionary appointments in the judicial leadership has been prohibited by law for almost two and a half years, its members continue to handle matters regarding the allocation of regulated positions, the disciplinary regime, training or inspection of the courts and tribunals. They also prepare reports on the Government’s legislative initiatives and maintain their function of institutional representation as members of the most important body of the third power of the State.
These tasks determine that, on occasions, they have to travel, either to attend plenary sessions, commissions or working groups or to attend public events, congresses or conferences related to the field of Justice. The CGPJ also pays for a roundtrip trip a week and on holidays or vacation periods for members who have their family residence outside of Madrid, which means that some directors have higher expenses than others, although even in this group there are differences.
According to published data, 82% of spending on official trips in the last four and a half years —872,586 euros— corresponds to what the CGPJ defines as “locomotion”. That is, travel by plane and train, taxis, official car service of the State Vehicle Park, tolls and car parks. 11% —116,642 euros— was dedicated to accommodation and the remaining 7% —75,255 euros— to maintenance.
For reasons of spending, practically half, 500,803 euros, was used to cover attendance at plenary sessions, commissions and other trips to one of the seven CGPJ headquarters. 468,042 euros to what the institution defines as “other service commissions”, which include attendance at courses, institutional meetings or events such as the delivery of offices to new judges or the raising of the national flag. Also unforeseen situations such as the expense incurred by several members to attend the funeral of her partner Victoria Cinto, who died last summer. Other expenses included in this heading have more superficial justifications such as “dispatch of vocal matters”.
The remaining 95,639 euros paid for 81 trips abroad by former President Carlos Lesmes – who resigned in October last year – and 11 other members. This section contains some of the largest disbursements of the mandate. For example, the largest expense is a six-day trip that the member Gerardo Martínez Tristán made to Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) in November 2019 to give various conferences as part of a course on legal language and sentence writing held in collaboration with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation. The cost was 7,398.04 euros. The fact that some members make more trips abroad than others is due to the fact that some of them are assigned specific responsibilities at the international level, which forces them to make larger outlays, mainly when it comes to trips to Latin America, explain sources from the governing body of judges.
The response to the Dívar case
Since 2012, the members are obliged to detail how they spend the money they charge to the Council’s coffers for job transfers and representation expenses. In addition, when it comes to trips abroad paid for with public money, they have to have the approval of the Permanent Commission, the hard core of the institution made up of the president and six members.
This management control and transparency regime of the CGPJ is the legacy of the scandal of its former president Carlos Dívar, who had to resign after it emerged that he had charged the CGPJ budgets with travel expenses, on weekends, with stays in hotels of luxury and meals in expensive restaurants. Then, the plenary session was forced to change the rule that, until then, exempted members from justifying and detailing their trips.
According to this regulation, accommodation expenses will be paid up to a maximum limit of 120 euros per day in national territory, while living expenses within national territory cannot exceed 53.34 euros per day. In addition, according to current regulations, when traveling by plane or train, members must take advantage of “the cheapest possible rates” and it is only allowed to use the superior class to tourist “on trips lasting more than three hours or when there is no tickets available in that category.
It is an issue that was questioned by Dívar’s successor in the CGPJ presidency, Gonzalo Moliner, who described the spending restrictions imposed as a result of the then-president’s private travel scandal as “excessive” and considered that traveling in economy class ” It is not the best image” for someone who holds a position that “is very important and needs some recognition”.
From official cars to taxis
In the current CGPJ there are two types of members: the members of the aforementioned Permanent Commission, which is the hard core where the main decisions are made and who have exclusive dedication; and the rest, who make this work compatible with their professions in the legal field as judges, lawyers or court clerks. The former charge more than 130,000 euros per year and also have other privileges such as having an official car at their disposal that they use when traveling. At the CGPJ, 13 vehicles from the state mobile fleet and as many drivers provide continuous service. In 2014, the body agreed to halve the number of official cars with the intention of reducing costs in 183,000 euros per year.
The rest of the members are only part-time and receive allowances for attending plenary sessions or commissions, set at 975 euros and 312 euros respectively. For their work trips, it is common for them to resort to taxis and vehicles with drivers. In fact, the data published every six months by the institution collect dozens of these types of transfers. For example, under the heading “travel from CGPJ to the airport” or similar, almost two hundred references appear in these four and a half years of expired mandate, with an average cost per trip of almost 52 euros.
The CGPJ only began to break down the different disbursements for trips from 2022. In that exercise, an expense in taxis and vehicles with drivers of 47,854.35 euros is collected. That same year, the body covered with another 55,240.36 euros stays of various members in the rooms of airport authorities. These rooms are managed by the Government delegations and allow the authorities to evade security controls and wait in these spaces until boarding, when they are transferred by van to the plane’s stairs. Members consulted defend the use of these facilities because, they maintain, a lot of time is saved by avoiding controls. Others, however, understand that it is an expense that “has no reason to exist” and that it is “totally superfluous.”
According to published statistics relating to the last four and a half years, the expenses of the members are very different. A circumstance that has to do, in part, with the fact that the CGPJ covers the trips to Madrid of directors who reside outside the capital and come every time there are plenary sessions, commissions or other types of acts of representation. This means that their expenses are higher, although there are also differences in this group.
The members with the highest amounts of expenses presented are the curator José María Macías (130,706.40), who combines the position of member with his work as a partner of the Cuatrecasas law firm in Barcelona; and the progressive Roser Bach (115,652.50), who is a magistrate of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia and who has just joined the Permanent. It is common for both of them to use the air shuttle in their transfers between Madrid and Barcelona. At the opposite extreme is Nuria Díaz, who only presented expenses worth 7,733.34 euros in four and a half years.
#million #euros #planes #trains #hotels #taxis