Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE).- The general of the Civil Guard in prison for his involvement in the “Meditor case”, which the Internal Affairs Service of the body points out as a recipient of bribes from businessmen, his collaborators told them that he had to think about his future before his imminent retirement: a future in which he was going to earn 4,500 euros less per month.
Division General Francisco Espinosa Navas had dedicated the last years of his career, from 2017 to 2021, directing a European Commission project in Africa aimed at helping the governments of Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Chad. to improve security in the Sahel strip, creating teams inspired by the rapid action groups of the Spanish Civil Guard, the GAR.
In this project, Espinosa did not get paid from the Civil Guard, but from the Spanish organization that administered it: the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Public Administration and Policies (FIIAPP), a public entity linked to international cooperation under the tutelage of a board of trustees headed by by the First Vice President of the Government and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Justice.
The general had a date marked on the calendar: January 11, 2021. That day he would retire within the Civil Guard, upon reaching the regulatory age, but he had already announced to his collaborators in the plot that he was going to continue to be linked to the GAR-SI Sahel project for a few more months, until June of that same year, when he had to definitively acquire retired status.
In a statement sent on February 8 to the judge of Santa Cruz de Tenerife who is investigating the case, the Internal Affairs Service reports that Espinosa’s latest income in his bank accounts for his payroll in the FIIAPP, already retired for the Guard Civil, were the following: 7,442 euros in two payments in January 2021, 6,993 euros in February, 6,993 in March, 9,738 in April and 7,563 in May. In June he received from the same entity a “compensation” of 32,026 euros and in August, a “settlement” of 12,308.
As of July, General Espinosa legally became one more retiree and his remuneration was reduced by one third, to 2,553 euros of his pension paid by Social Security.
According to part of the conversations collected in the judicial proceedings, Espinosa knew what was going to happen and spoke about it with some of those involved in the “Mediator case.”
“He had to look for a future”
This is specifically stated by the intermediary who gives the case its name, Marcos Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, who in a conversation with another of those involved explained that Espinosa “was thinking about his economic future, because he was going to retire and had to look for a future for himself.” he and his lover”, which he tried to get hired with a monthly salary of 3,000 euros by one of the businessmen who asked for his favors.
Navarro Tacoronte declared during the investigation that he himself gave the general envelopes with cash amounts ranging from 1,500 to 3,000 euros, money all contributed by businessmen thinking of benefiting from their influence, either to get business, or to get rid of from above to the Nature Protection Service (Seprona) of the Civil Guard.
According to the intermediary, General Espinosa not only moved his contacts in the Canary Islands from the time in which he directed the Civil Guard in the province of Las Palmas, but he himself caused the favorable situation to extort various ranchers.
“To put pressure on the Canary Islands ranchers, Division General Espinosa managed to have several farms sent to Seprona to inspect them and, therefore, the Canarian ranchers were forced to pay the commissions imposed, because they were told that they could be penalized in otherwise,” says Navarro Tacoronte, in a statement reviewed by the Civil Guard in its report.
“Cape Verde’s problem is that you can’t bring the money”
In some of the meetings with the businessmen who sought his favors, Espinosa confessed that after so much time in the Civil Guard “he got burned out a lot” and told them about Cape Verde, a country he liked because there “with four fucking cards you can live” and be “a king, captain general, a maharajah”.
“The problem is that you can’t bring the money with you,” adds the general in a conversation that the intermediary recorded and reproduced by the Internal Affairs Service. Those words are recorded on November 4, 2020, when he had two months to go to the reserve and eight to leave the GAR-SI Sahel project.
Espinosa not only liked Cape Verde, but also boasted of contacts in that African archipelago. In fact, he promised to get a contract for the installation of solar panels in Cape Verde and Mozambique worth 35 million euros to one of the businessmen involved. His fee: 3.5 million, 10% of the business, as “representation expenses.”
On Friday, February 10, 2023, Judge María de los Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceres ordered the Civil Guard to search his three homes the following Tuesday, in Madrid, Seville and Punta Umbría (Huelva), and to arrest him for bribery. , influence peddling and belonging to an organized criminal group. EFE