One of Adif’s contracts for the renewal of the Madrid-Seville railway line financed with community funds – the European Public Prosecutor’s Office yesterday sent the UCO to the headquarters of the railway infrastructure manager – was awarded on March 16, 2020, in the first hours of confinement, just 48 hours after the first state of alarm due to the covid-19 pandemic came into force. One of the sections where the bidding companies acted, including Azvi – which the Civil Guard also registered yesterday – is that of Urda (Toledo), where the train accident occurred on October 28 in which 69 people lost their lives.
The renovation project, which had an initial execution period of 15 months, amounted to a total of 49.4 million euros, of which 18 million were allocated to bidding for the works.
Work that consisted of the replacement of 63 detours (crucial elements in allowing the splitting of a track into two), of the total of 319 existing along the entire line, as it passes through the provinces of Madrid, Toledo, Ciudad Real, Córdoba and Seville. The action took place in the municipal areas of Los Gavilanes (Madrid); Yeles, Mora and Urda (Toledo); Malagón, Calatrava and Ciudad Real; Conquest and Villanueva (Córdoba); and Guadajoz (Seville).
The works were financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and awarded to a UTE (temporary union of companies that join forces to execute a project) made up of Ferrovial, Contratas y Ventas (Convensa), Azvi (the construction company that hired Koldo García, then advisor to Minister Ábalos, in 2023 to expand its businesses in Latin America, although the UCO suspects that the remuneration responded to its efforts to rig awards for the benefit of the company) and Agrupación Guinovart Obras y Servicios Hispania.
The same companies participated in phase II of the project, with a tender budget of 26.8 million euros and an execution period of 16 months throughout 2024 and 2025.
“End of useful life”
According to the specifications, the work included the “renewal of leaks, detours and expansion devices due to the state of the materials” on the Madrid-Seville railway line. The action extended to a total of 49 detours and semi-escapes. In particular, four devices were replaced in the Adamuz section (where on January 18, 46 people died as a result of another tragic accident).
In the section “needs to be satisfied and circumstances of the contract” it is noted that the Madrid-Seville AVE line “has been in operation for more than 25 years with a large amount of passenger traffic”, so “to ensure that the line continues to function with all the features and advantages that High Speed offers, it has been considered necessary to carry out various maintenance tasks, including the renewal of exhausts and detours due to the state of the materials.”
All the devices whose replacement was being considered were installed between the years 1991-1992, so they had already reached the “end of their useful life”, having to be changed by “more modern and efficient ones, equipped with technology more in line with the functionality currently required on High Speed Lines.” And he points out that Adif assumes these jobs “as administrator responsible for the construction, maintenance, administration and operation of the railway lines.”
Azvi denies it
In a statement, the Azvi Group assures that the documentation required at its headquarters in Seville by the UCO after the opening of a secret piece of the “Koldo case” has “nothing to do” with the Madrid-Seville High Speed line, but with “a completely different project,” reports Efe.
In the press release, the business group specifies that after more than two years of police and judicial investigations “neither Grupo Azvi nor its directors, administrators or employees have the status of being investigated in any of the cases opened against Messrs. Ábalos, Koldo and Aldama, or any other.”
“From Grupo Azvi we only want that responsibilities be definitively resolved in court as soon as possible, for which Grupo Azvi is fully available to continue collaborating with the investigating magistrate in everything necessary, attending to all the requirements that may be ordered,” the company says.