More than 12 years after legal proceedings began against several councillors, the current mayor and former mayors, and after several postponements, the «Manilva Case» returns this Monday, 6 March to the first section of the Provincial Court at the Palace of Justice in Málaga with the «El Hacho strand», 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.
This Monday 6 March at ten in the morning, the court will seek to clarify the alleged offences of prevarication and misappropriation of public funds over the irregularities in the transfer of municipal funds to the El Hacho urban development body. The defendants include the town’s current mayor, Mario Jiménez, the current councillor for cleaning, Paqui López, the Town Hall’s legal adviser, Aitor Menoyo, and the former councillors Antonio de Haro and Emilio López, as well as the former mayor from the Izquierda Unida party.
The oral hearing had been scheduled for 19 May 2022, but the current mayor, Mario Jiménez, was in hospital at the time, so the defendants’ lawyers considered that the trial should be postponed so that it could be held jointly. The prosecutor initially maintained that two hearings should be held, but the court ultimately accepted the defence’s argument and the trial was postponed to 23 September 2022, a date on which it was again not held, owing to a further postponement.
The events date back to 2008, when the Entidad Urbanística Colaboradora de Conservación del Complejo Residencial El Hacho was set up, the largest residential development in the municipality, located next to Puerto de la Duquesa.
The prosecutor states in his submission that both the mayor and some members of the Town Hall’s governing board, including the current mayor, ordered or helped to approve, with their vote, transactions through which the El Hacho urban development body was financed with Town Hall money.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office is also demanding 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, while for the mayor and four other people it is seeking four years in prison and 17 years of disqualification from public employment or office.
