Anti-Corruption investigates possible irregularities in the aid from the Generalitat to young people formerly under guardianship with the collaboration of the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office is investigating possible irregularities in the granting of aid by the Generalitat for young people formerly under guardianship, after the Catalonia Anti-Fraud Office warned about the lack of control in the companies responsible for monitoring these benefits.

The public prosecutor's office has an ongoing investigation procedure, in which it has requested the collaboration of the Catalonia Anti-Fraud Office, in relation to economic benefits for former wards and the possible existence of "ghost places" for housing young people. The Anti-Fraud Office, moreover, was already investigating on its own the complaints that a social educator filed for possible irregularities in the benefits of the former Directorate General for Childhood and Adolescence (DGAIA), whose management was carried out by a UTE formed by the Mercè Fontanilles Foundation and the Resilis Foundation.

And not only this, but, to the complaints of alleged irregularities in the management of benefits, filed last year, an report from the Sindicatura de Cuentas also added, which raised to 167.5 million euros the undue payments of the DGAIA between 2016 and 2024 and warned of the lack of effective monitoring and control in the management of aid. In addition, the complaints coincided with the terrible case of the minor who was a victim of a pedophile network in the Barcelona neighborhood of Raval while under guardianship. This led to a crisis that led the Government to reform the DGAIA, now called the Directorate General for the Prevention and Protection of Childhood and Adolescence (DGPPIA) and to directly assume the monitoring of economic benefits for young people under guardianship.

Despite not finding fraud in the aid, the OAC does insist to the Prosecutor's Office on investigating whether the clauses of the contracts signed with the companies responsible for managing the benefits were complied with, after detecting deficiencies in their monitoring. Separately, the OAC maintains a second investigation open, also in collaboration with the Prosecutor's Office, regarding the complaint of "ghost places," housing resources for former wards paid for by the administration but for which there is no record of them being used by the young people they were intended for. In this second investigation, Anti-Fraud is analyzing the documentation related to the contracts that the DGAIA signed with the companies awarded the management of the benefit.

Last May, the former Minister of Social Rights and Inclusion, Mònica Martínez Bravo, announced that her department will take over the service of monitoring the economic benefits of former foster youth starting on January 1, 2027, and that, therefore, it will not be put out to tender again.