Benidorm will have to pay 1.4 million plus interest to FCC for the review of prices of the years 2009, 2010 and 2011
The judge estimates the amount fixed by the external audit of the City Hall and reduces by approximately 2 million the claim of the concessionaire
Benidorm City Hall will have to pay by court judgment to the concessionaire company of street cleaning and garbage collection, Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), 1.4 million euros plus the corresponding interest of delay because of the review of prices during the years 2009, 2010 and 2011. This judicial decision reduces by approximately 2 million euros the initial claim of FCC and accepts the amount fixed by the external audit contracted by the City Hall.
The content of this sentence of the Court of Administrative Litigation number 1 of Alicante, dated last December 23 and notified yesterday to the City Council, has been reported to all municipal groups in a Board of Spokespersons.
The origin of this sentence is in the application for price review submitted by the company to the City Council in the previous legislature, specifically in August 2012, although since 2010 had submitted an annual letter in the same direction. In this request, FCC indicated that it was entitled to collect € 3,266,328.83 plus interest, as a "difference between fees charged and revised fees" for the years 2009, 2010 and 2011. In the absence of a response from the City Council , the merchant chose to go to court to claim payment of this amount.
In its ruling, the judge recognizes the right of the merchant to collect "the difference between fees charged and revised fees of the periods corresponding to the 2009, 2010 and 2011 annuities", as well as to receive "the corresponding interest of delay to compute for each exercise ". However, the judge rejects the amount claimed by the company and is in line with the one raised by the external audit hired by the City Council, which speaks of 1,409,166.94 euros.
The mayor, Toni Pérez, explained that "the controversy was in the amount corresponding to the price revision, as both Engineering and Intervention departments had certified in each report that based on the contract the company was entitled to request it." The mayor has indicated that in a report of 2011, and as the sentence states, Intervention recognized the right to price revision, although it indicated that it could not be paid for "lack of budgetary appropriation". Subsequently, in 2013 the same department indicated that when fixing the amount it had to abide by "the report of the external audit contracted by the City Hall" and that has been provided as testimonial evidence during the procedure.
Pérez added that "instructions have already been issued to pay immediately the amount corresponding to interest on arrears," which from the Economic Area are estimated at about 400,000 euros. As regards the principal - the 1.4 million euros - its payment will be included in the 2017 budget.