Corruption victims' group seeks external audit in Canet over 15 million
A residents' group in Canet d'En Berenguer, a town bordering Sagunto in Camp de Morvedre, is demanding that the local council set up a working committee and commission an independent audit of files worth a provisional 15 million euros.
A residents' group calling itself the Corruption Victims' Platform (Plataforma de Afectados por la Corrupción) has spent weeks pushing the Canet d'En Berenguer council to open its accounts to outside scrutiny. Its demand comes down to two requests: setting up a working committee for legal affairs, and commissioning an audit from professionals with no ties to the council. The trigger was the plenary session of 17 September, where, according to both the group and several opposition parties, the governing team sidestepped specific questions about contracts and lawsuits affecting public funds.
For the group behind the push, taking the files out of council offices and into a committee with every political group represented would stop the information from staying solely in the governing team's hands. That body, they explain, would give opposition councillors access to technical documentation and let specialised staff clarify, case by case, where each procedure currently stands.
The audit they are asking for has a different aim: to use technical criteria to separate what the council has already paid from figures that are still open estimates. The Platform itself admits that its reference number — a combined impact of around 15 million euros — is a preliminary calculation, not a closed figure, and needs to be broken down file by file before it can be called real damage to public funds.
One of the most developed strands directly affects water supply and sewerage, run by the company EGEVASA (the local water utility). According to documents held by the Platform, a regional court ruled in March 2025 in favour of the company AQLARA in an appeal against the council, ordering an official review of two contracts signed in 2004 and 2009 over a possible cause for nullity. The group wants to know where that process currently stands, what reports have been issued and what the local government has ultimately decided.
Also on the list is Mas Camarena, an education-land project where a land-transfer dispute is valued by the group at around 2.2 million euros. The Platform wants that figure checked against the court ruling — final or not — and against the council decisions that followed, and it clarifies that the figure relates to the dispute itself, not to already-confirmed damage.
Added to that is the Vitas Amarre hotel project, where a regional court ruling reportedly set compensation at 276,375 euros, with further proceedings still pending before Spain's Court of Auditors, and the Cantó swimming pool, whose final cost — put at an estimated 700,000 euros — the Platform wants reconstructed by reviewing budgets, contract awards and invoices. Added together, these three files come to around 3.17 million euros, though the group itself stresses that this total cannot be treated as confirmed damage until each case is assessed separately.
The rest of the request covers more scattered matters: legal-advice contracts — including work commissioned from the Academia Valenciana de Juristas (a Valencian lawyers' association) — the running of the council's tax-collection service, certain staffing and internal-promotion procedures, and a file known internally as "Semáforo Foro Rojo". In all these cases, the Platform wants access to the paperwork to check whether public procurement rules were followed.
The 17 September plenary itself remains a source of controversy. According to the group's account and the opposition's, Mayor Pere Antoni Chordà avoided going into detail on several questions and put off setting up the legal committee; they further claim that during the session he called a councillor a liar, a claim still to be checked against the official minutes and recording. So far, the local government has not given a detailed public response either on the figures or on the request for a committee and audit.
For Canet's residents, the debate is not purely about accounting: any item that ends up confirmed as extra spending ultimately falls on the same municipal budget that also has to cover basic services such as street lighting, cleaning or road maintenance. That is why the Platform is pushing to separate, as soon as possible, what are still open estimates from what could become a real payment obligation, before a still-provisional figure settles into public debate as if it were already a closed fact.
According to elperiodicodeaqui.com.
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