Once again, the mayor of the town, Mario Jiménez, has been summoned this coming Friday, 9 July, to Criminal Court number 6 in Málaga, where he is expected to be tried alongside former mayor Antonia Muñoz and six other people for the alleged irregular award of municipal contracts to a company linked to family members.
In addition to Muñoz and her husband, V.C.S., the defendants are the current mayor, Mario Jiménez Rodríguez, and the current councillor for Cleaning and Solid Waste Treatment and Social Affairs and Equality, Francisca López; the former mayors Diego Urieta Jiménez and Emilio López Berenguer; and the former councillors for Cleaning, Fishing and Vehicle Fleet and for Human Resources, Agriculture, Commerce, Consumer Affairs and Development, Antonio de Haro Fernández and Diego Díaz Jiménez, respectively.
Most of the defendants, except Berenguer, of the Agrupación Socialista de Manilva (ASM), were members of IU and created Compromiso Manilva when the left-wing coalition, five years after the political scandal broke, forced their move to the Non-Attached Group in mid-2013. This party currently governs the municipality with the support of Diego José Jimenez of the PSOE, who is precisely the main witness in this case.
This is one of the three parts into which the investigation into alleged municipal corruption during the former mayor’s term of office was split. The other two cases concern the alleged cronyism in the hiring of staff since 2007 at Manilva Town Hall and the alleged transfer of funds from the Town Hall to an entity. The latter case is pending trial in September, after being postponed on 19 May because the current mayor, Mario Jiménez, did not attend, citing health problems.
This part of the case should have been heard last October but was also postponed because the former mayor Antonia Muñoz’s lawyer was on sick leave following a traffic accident. The public prosecutor accuses all eight defendants of the offences of prevarication in conjunction with self-interested management, both on a continuing basis, and is seeking two years in prison for each of them, a fine of 24 months at 15 euros per day and four years of special disqualification from public employment or office, according to the prosecutor.
The specific case to be tried next Friday investigates the award of contracts to people with family ties to the former mayor, specifically to her husband, for the payment of invoices for works and services «in which the requirements demanded by the regulations applicable to the award procedure were not met», the prosecution states in its provisional submission.
The prosecution states that after the elections of May 2007, the then mayor for IU, «taking advantage of her position and conspiring with the man who was her husband, proceeded to award minor contracts verbally in favour of the company», set up by both of them in 2005, «for the provision of certain services, knowing that this failed to comply with legal requirements».
The indictment states that this was done «without administrative contracting files, without a proposal and without approval of the expenditure», as the then spouse «submitted invoices to the Town Hall for services already provided, thereby failing to meet the requirements set by legislation», and that the Intervention department had also raised objections due to a lack of budget allocation.
Although the mayor had the authority to approve this expenditure, she delegated it to the governing board, «of which the other defendants were members in their capacity as councillors, who, being fully aware of the unlawfulness of the contracting and knowing of the 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 the current mayor. «Likewise, the defendants conspired to agree other contracts verbally in which all administrative procedure was completely dispensed with in their award«, the document states, which also details other invoices in the name of another relative’s company.
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