The First Section of the Audiencia de Málaga (Málaga Provincial Court) is scheduled to try, this coming Thursday 23 September at 10:00, the mayor of the town Mario Jiménez; the former mayor Antonia Muñoz; the current councillor for the cleaning department Paqui López; the Town Hall’s legal adviser Aitor Menoyo; and the former councillors Antonio de Haro and Emilio López, for the offences of prevarication and misappropriation of public funds, over alleged irregularities in the transfer of municipal funds to the El Hacho urban development body when Muñoz was mayor.
The oral hearing had been scheduled for 19 May, but the mayor was in hospital at that time, so the defendants’ lawyers argued that the trial should be postponed so that it could be held as a single proceeding; the prosecutor initially maintained that there should be two hearings, but the court ultimately accepted the defences’ argument.
The events date back to 2008, when the Entidad Urbanística Colaboradora de Conservación del Complejo Residencial El Hacho (the urban development maintenance body for the El Hacho residential complex) was set up. It is the largest housing development in the municipality, located next to Puerto de la Duquesa.
The prosecutor states in the indictment that both the mayor and some members of the Town Hall’s governing board, among them the current mayor, ordered or helped to approve, with their votes, transactions by which the El Hacho urban development body was financed with Town Hall money.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office also demands that the defendants and the El Hacho urban development body compensate Manilva Town Hall with 217.159 euros, the amount allegedly misappropriated.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office is initially seeking eight years in prison for the former mayor, accusing her of these offences on a continuing basis; for the mayor and four others it is seeking four years in prison and 17 years of disqualification from public employment or office.
An adviser is also accused, for whom the public prosecutor is seeking seven years in prison.
The following week, on 27 September, four mayors of the municipality will again have to appear in a separate part of the so-called “Caso Manilva”, which continues its proceedings after the preliminary hearings held on 9 July, more than 11 years after the initial complaint by the works council that started the whole procedure and investigations.
This part of the case concerns the investigation into the awarding of contracts to people with family ties to the former mayor, specifically her husband, for the payment of invoices for works and services “which did not meet the requirements demanded by the regulations applicable to the award procedure”.
The indictment states that after the elections of May 2007, the then mayor for IU, “taking advantage of this position and acting in concert with her then husband, proceeded to award minor contracts verbally to the company”, set up by both in 2005, “for the provision of certain services, knowing that this failed to comply with legal requirements”.
The indictment says this was done “without any administrative contracting files, without a proposal and without approval of the expenditure”, as the then spouse “submitted to the Town Hall invoices for services already provided, thus failing to comply with the requirements set by legislation”, and that the Intervention department had also raised objections over a lack of budget allocation.
Although the mayor had the powers to authorise this expenditure, she delegated it to the governing board, “of which the rest of the accused were members in their capacity as councillors, who, being fully aware of the unlawfulness of the contracting and knowing of the existing marital relationship, proceeded to approve the invoices submitted“.
According to the prosecutor, many of the invoices approved by the governing board bore the signature of Mario Jiménez, current mayor of Manilva. “Likewise, the accused agreed among themselves to enter verbally into other contracts in which any administrative procedure was totally and absolutely dispensed with in their award“, the document says, which also details other invoices in the name of another relative’s company.
Besides Muñoz and her husband, V.C.S., the accused are the current mayor, Mario Jiménez Rodríguez, and the current cleaning councillor Francisca López; the former mayors Diego Urieta Jiménez and Emilio López Berenguer; and the former councillors for cleaning and human resources, Antonio de Haro Fernández and Diego Díaz Jiménez, respectively.
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