The Spanish agency Efe had access this Thursday to a piece of the process that responds to the request of the Public Ministry and of Mercasa itself for Ameijide to be removed from what is known as the Mercasa case.
This part of the process deals with the alleged bribery of Angolan officials to obtain contracts in the African country, in which 17 people and four companies are accused by the Public Ministry, which last year had already asked for the case to be closed by Ameijide.
Eduardo Ameijide was president of Mercasa for five years (2012 to 2018), the period in which the events under investigation took place, and, according to his lawyer, Carlos Gómez-Jara, in a document presented a few days ago, no one is accused in the case.
The Anti-Corruption Public Ministry argues in its indictment that Mercasa, Incatema and Ibadesa (later called Tuy Cincuenta) created the Mercasa Incatema Consulting Consortium in 2002 with the aim of obtaining "public contracts in the Dominican Republic and Angola".
In this case, public contracts signed by Spanish companies with the Angolan government between 2006 and 2016 for the construction of a supply market (wholesaler) in Luanda, a "turnkey" project called CLOD, were investigated.
The Public Prosecutor's Office considers that "there are relevant indications that the directors of the aforementioned companies paid illegal commissions to the Angolan authorities and civil servants who participated in the contracting and execution of these contracts, in order to obtain the corresponding awards in that country".
The sum of these contracts exceeded, according to his calculations, 500 million dollars, "although the amount charged by these companies during these ten years of commercial activity was around 200,000,000 euros".
The case against the public company that continues to be investigated by the Audiencia Nacional, a Spanish court that handles the most important cases, is not just about Angola, but also about other companies, such as Mercasa in Panama and the Dominican Republic.
