CS: Citizens do not know for months how much their municipal and regional offices spend

During the general assembly to re-establish Ciudadanos on 14 and 15 January, the then finance secretary, Carlos Cuadrado, reported that despite the crisis the party’s national coffers had 11 million euros and the numbers were bleeding. Associate. But the new executive has found that the formation has lost control of other accounts: those that correspond to regional and municipal parliamentary groups throughout Spain, as the management has acknowledged in this newsletter. Two weeks after autonomous boards and local corporations were dissolved due to the call for May elections, the new leadership is now trying to recover quickly.

Cuadrado, the party’s historical and CS in charge of money, was authorized as a proxy to control all the bank accounts of the groups in the institutions in which Ciudadanos holds representation. a power which he shared with the spokesmen of each group. In November, Cuadrado unilaterally withdrew his name from the accounts, as identified by the new address. And, since this movement, the National Executive has lost thousands of Euros of supervision. On February 28, Cuadrado was fired as treasurer when leadership changed after the re-constitutional assembly and José Manuel Gil was appointed as the new finance secretary. EL PAÍS has tried to contact Cuadrado to obtain his version, without success.

The leadership recently discovered the confusion of the signatures. And he started working to regain control without delay. This week, party councilors began receiving emails – accessed by this newspaper – asking them to include the CS’s manager as the new proxy for the bank account. They are now also taking the charge personally to make change.

The task is not easy. On the one hand, because many councilors have left the Ciudadanos in recent months, who are unhappy with the refundation process and may refuse to grant that authorization. A risk of which management is aware. And, on the other hand, because there are members of the Ciudadanos who are wary of where the money will go. A critic of the executive says, “If the management wants to use the money for May’s election campaign, you must have a thousand eyes.” According to the people responsible, one of the regional parliamentary groups opposes renewing the authorization.

Management categorically denies that these amounts are being used for campaigns for regional and municipal elections in May, something that is not allowed by law. They confirm the fee is required to include the new attorney in the accounts. According to management sources, the aim is to ascertain how the groups have spent and are spending the allocations received from regional parliaments and town halls. Other authorized sources from the executive add: “Agreements have been signed with us for services, mentorship, programmatic support, management support. And that money is transferred from the groups to the party for providing these services”. Sources opposed to the leadership allege that such services, which the party is pulling in this hour of crisis, are hardly being provided. There are only two weeks left before the autonomous chambers and municipal corporations are dissolved and excess money from the groups must be returned to the regional parliament or relevant council.

Several party sources say that the 11 million euros that Cuadrado counted as money in cash included amounts corresponding to institutional groups. an extreme which the executive vehemently denies. What they do recognize is that “multiple bills”, “pending expenses” and “severance payments” are pending payments. But in addition to the group matching money, they claim.

Meanwhile, CS candidate for mayor of Madrid and current deputy mayor, Begona Vilasís, has launched his campaign this week with the motto. madrid dc In Villaci’s team, according to various sources, there was anger over the delay in allocation of budget by the national leadership for the regions in the campaign. Management sources said, “A first estimate of what is in line with each autonomous community has been done.” “Now, each zonal committee will have to make distribution based on the weightage of the municipality. We are going to invest more in those places where there is potential for better results.”