Uruguay
Vigo Court Dismissed Mario Cardama’s Complaint Over the False Guarantee Because a Case Is Open in Uruguay
The Spanish court decided to provisionally close the businessman’s filing, considering that the same matter is already under investigation in Uruguay. According to Búsqueda, the decision became final because it was not appealed.
Vigo Court provisionally dismissed the criminal complaint that Mario Cardama had filed in Spain over the allegedly false guarantee linked to the contract to build two ocean-going patrol vessels for the Uruguayan state. According to Búsqueda, the court considered that this avenue should be closed because there is already an ongoing criminal investigation in Uruguay into the same facts.
According to the response that the communications department of the Judiciary of Galicia gave to the weekly, the ruling was adopted on May 21, 2026 by the investigating division of the Vigo Court of First Instance, which ordered the “provisional dismissal and filing of the case” after finding international criminal lis pendens. The same office also confirmed, again according to Búsqueda, that the decision was not appealed by the shipyard owner.
Cardama’s complaint argued that he too had been the victim of a fraudulent scheme. The businessman pointed to intermediaries who would have put him in contact with EuroCommerce Bank, the firm that issued a guarantee for 4.1 million euros submitted to the Ministry of Defense and that made it possible to activate the 82 million euro contract for the OPVs. Later, the Uruguayan government denounced that the guarantee was false.
The case in Uruguay had been opened on October 24, 2025 by the government, two days after a press conference led by Yamandú Orsi in which suspicion of fraud was raised. According to Búsqueda, the Executive took that step after trying to enforce the guarantee and finding that the address declared by the supposed financial firm housed a real estate agency and that the company was in forced liquidation. Later, EuroCommerce Bank was removed from the United Kingdom commercial register.
The weekly added that, in recent months, the Executive Branch submitted amendments to its complaint and that the prosecutor for Economic and Complex Crimes, Gilberto Rodríguez, has already taken statements from the first witnesses. It also indicated that Cardama included a copy of his criminal filing in Spain in the arbitration he initiated over the contract termination decided by Orsi’s government.
Regarding the content of the complaint filed in Vigo, Búsqueda noted that it mentions the firms Gestión Spartax Trading, Forum Europe and Star Alliance Consulting, as well as Nicolás Salmón, Juan Carrasco and Alex Walsh as people who may have had involvement in the events. The businessman said he hired Forum Europe to find an entity that would issue the guarantee and that company, in turn, subcontracted work with Star Alliance Consulting.
According to the same outlet, Cardama said he paid 30,000 euros plus VAT to Forum Europe for intermediation, 123,405 euros to EuroCommerce Bank for issuing the guarantee and 36,000 euros plus VAT to Star Alliance Consulting for a renewal that later proved questionable. He also submitted emails and banking documents as support for those transactions.
Búsqueda also reported that part of those emails had already been covered by El País. Among them is an exchange from September 2025 with Star Alliance and with the management of Gestión Spartax Trading over the renewal of the guarantee. A police expert report requested by the Executive concluded that that renewal document would be false.
Also according to Búsqueda, Cardama also submitted emails that he attributed directly to EuroCommerce Bank after the case broke. One of them informed of a change of mailing address. In another, sent in response to a complaint from the businessman, the supposed entity said there were no problems with the guarantee documentation and attributed the situation to an administrative issue. Later, Cardama told the Spanish courts that the bank had probably already been dissolved, had begun that process or had ceased operations, something that ended with its removal from the British register in November 2025.
Sources
About this note. Written by El Notero with assistance from artificial intelligence, based on what was published by the cited outlet. El Notero did not conduct its own reporting on this event.
