The shadow of a enigmatic achiever specialized in collecting bribes from companies in exchange for awards, plans on one of the main Spanish multinationals: Fomento Construcciones y Contratas (FCC).
A confidential report from the Andorra Police to which EL PAÍS has had access reveals that The company paid 6.5 million euros to the lawyer Mauricio Cort to guarantee contracts in Latin America. The money was used to pay “illegal commissions,” investigators conclude in a document dated last July.
Since 2010, the construction company FCC has hired the services of the Spanish lawyer, 54 years old and of Panamanian nationality, Mauricio Corte. And, as a result of this professional collaboration, seven public works contracts were awarded for a value of 434 million in Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
Agents in Andorra, where Cort is being investigated for an alleged crime against the administration of justice, have proven that the lawyer received -at least- 6.5 million FCC. A spokesperson for the Spanish multinational declines to evaluate the information.
He achiever He collected this money in two accounts in the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), an entity in a small country of 77,000 inhabitants that, when the events occurred, was protected by banking secrecy.
To protect your anonymity, Cut He placed the instrumental companies of Montevideo (Uruguay) Neecel Corp and Arados del Plata as holders of his accounts in the BPA, in which he appeared as the front man of the lawyer Juan Carlos Siekavica.
The lawyer joined the Andorran bank three million FCC commissions coming from three Mexican instrumental firms. And he collected 3.5 million in the European country from a transfer issued from the United Mizhari Bank in Zurich (Switzerland).
Investigators frame this last transaction in an alleged advisory contract between Cort and FCC that masked an “intermediation” service with the Panamanian government to favor the Spanish multinational in “several work awards.”
Between 2010 and 2014, power as achiever de Cort spread through the governments of Ricardo Martinelli (Panama), Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) and Mauricio Funes (El Salvador).
Andorran agents have no doubts about the purpose of FCC’s payments to the lawyer. “All the evidence found during our investigation reaffirms the thesis that Cort acted as a bridge to channel funds that were presumably intended to pay illicit commissions,” the police report states.
After hiring the lawyer, the Spanish multinational obtained projects in Panama such as the Luis Chicho Fábrega Hospital (127 million), the electoral headquarters (27.6) and access to the Pacific channel of the Canal (187) – in consortium with the firms ICA and Meco—or the rehabilitation of the Centenario bridge (27.6). Also a beneficiary in Nicaragua was the execution of the central judicial complex in Managua (13.8), section five of the Longitudinal Norte highway in El Salvador (31.2) and the remodeling of national route three in Costa Rica (19.7 ).
The contracts of discord
The latest investigations by the investigators focus on a contract dated April 28, 2010 between an alleged front man of Cort and the one who was director in Latin America of FCC until 2013, Eugenio del Barrio. Under the term “declaration of intentions”, the document committed the Spanish multinational to paying a 4% commission to the lawyer for the works obtained in Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The lawyer was sentenced in 2018 by a Panama court to 48 months in prison for acting as an intermediary in the payment of illegal commissions from Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction company that perpetrated the largest bribery network in America.
Since 2019, the Spanish National Court has been investigating FCC as a legal entity for the payment of illegal commissions to guarantee the award of public works in Panama between 2010 and 2014. The investigations, which attribute the crimes of corruption in international transactions and money laundering to the construction company of capitals, they track possible bites on two lines of the metro and the Ciudad de la Salud in the country’s capital.
The latest report from the Andorran Police indicates that Cort collected 7.4 million from Odebrecht in the Pyrenean principality. The Brazilian construction company, involved in paying bribes to leaders and officials of a dozen American countries, paid him for the services of achiever through its instrumental firms Aeon Group and Klienfeld. “The money was used to pay bribes to politicians and members of Latin American governments, among whom there are people close to the former president of Panama Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014).”
