The court cases in Manilva are dragging on in the courts more than 11 years after proceedings began, and there has been another postponement, both of the hearing scheduled for the 23rd, the «El Hacho strand», and of the one scheduled for the 27th, «irregular hiring». No new dates are known for now.
The First Section of the Audiencia de Málaga had been due to try, this coming Thursday 23 September at 10:00, the town’s mayor 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 of the council 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 the 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 two hearings should be held, but the court finally accepted the defence’s argument.
The events date back to 2008, when the Entidad Urbanística Colaboradora de Conservación del Complejo Residencial El Hacho was set up. El Hacho is the largest residential 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 vote, operations through which the El Hacho urban development body was financed with Town Hall money.
The prosecution 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 prosecution 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 other people 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 were again due to appear in the separate strand 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 began the whole procedure and the investigations.
This strand 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 «in which the requirements demanded by the regulations applicable to the award procedure have not been met».
This accusation states that after the elections of May 2007, the then mayor for IU, «taking advantage of this office and acting in concert with her then 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 she was failing 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 to the Town Hall invoices for services already provided, thus failing to comply with the requirements set by law», and that the Town Hall’s financial controller had also raised objections over the lack of budget allocation.
Although the mayor had the authority to approve these expenses, 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, the current mayor of Manilva. «Likewise, the accused agreed among themselves to enter into other contracts verbally in which any administrative procedure in their award was likewise totally and absolutely dispensed with«, says the document, 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 councillor for cleaning, Francisca López; the former mayors Diego Urieta Jiménez and Emilio López Berenguer; and the former councillors for cleaning and for human resources, Antonio de Haro Fernández and Diego Díaz Jiménez, respectively.
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