A little more than ten days ago, the PSOE of La Rioja echoed a “new irregularity in La Rioja 360.” The socialist deputy, Miguel González de Legarra, assured that “La Rioja 360 is contracting services with a false self-employed person and is also violating the Contract Law.”
This issue has reached the plenary session of the Parliament of La Rioja this Thursday and the responsible owner, José Luis Pérez Pastor, has denied it. In his response, the counselor has assured that the parliamentarian “does not know in how many ways and ways you have screwed up, since you have done it from the technical point of view, from the political point of view and from the point of view of the personal treatment”, also in a “cursing” way.
He pointed out that when we came to the Government “we found an obsolete structure in which many things in ‘La Rioja 360’ depended on a single person”, which is why a “renewal” process has been carried out, which has been reported. with “total punctiliousness and transparency to the press in each of its steps.”
Pérez Pastor has assured that “at no time has there been any division,” because “at no time has the amount exceeded 15,000 euros.” He has indicated that “there has not been a bad contract, what there has been is a need for technical assistance in a task that I hope will bear good results to get tourism out of the hole, from the abyss, from the ignominy in which you left it, in the one you left him.”
The PSOE describes it as “intolerable”
This has been the response to a question from the PSOE about La Rioja 360 Degrees Advances, Society for the Promotion of La Rioja. The socialist deputy has stated that it is “intolerable that this hiring has been made with a person who worked under the orders of the current general director of Tourism, Virginia Borges, in the private company that she managed until her appointment as a senior official in the Government of the Popular Party. ”. González de Legarra explained that this person “worked in Digital Marketing, a company owned by Virginia Borges.”
Since September, La Rioja 360 “has hired someone who, until just two months before, worked under Borges in his private company, a contract that continues month after month until the current moment.” Miguel González de Legarra has related how in 2023 “this person issued 5 invoices to La Rioja 360, each of them for an amount of 2,525 euros plus VAT.” That is, during the year 2023 “it invoiced a total of 12,625 euros, to which VAT must be added, which exceeds 15,000 euros.”
The socialist deputy has asserted that in 2024 “this person continues to bill, so everything indicates that we are dealing with a self-employed worker whose only client is the Government of La Rioja, specifically, La Rioja 360.”
González de Legarra has stated that “everything points to the fact that we are dealing with a case of contract splitting, to which we must add a clear case of false self-employment”. The Socialist deputy has stated that “we are talking about false self-employment because it is a single service, because, despite its amount, it varies from one year to another and there has been no tender as established by the Law and, thirdly, because the total amount far exceeds 15,000 euros plus VAT, which is the maximum authorised by the Regulations”.
To this, he added that the General Directorate of Tourism, this year, “has been characterized by an absolute absence of management”, as well as has highlighted the situation in which the staff of that department finds themselves with “a third of them are on sick leave due to anxiety and depression caused by a work environment that they themselves describe as unbearable and horrible.”