The 602 Town Hall jobs-for-friends cases in Manilva

The 602 jobs-for-friends cases of the «clientelist network» woven by the alleged corruption of IU on the Costa del Sol. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is seeking 15 years of disqualification for continued misuse of public office for the former mayor and three councillors of Manilva, the only municipality governed by the left-wing coalition on the Málaga coast. The trial will take place at the start of 2022.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5… And so on up to at least 602. This is the number of alleged cases of cronyism documented by the Guardia Civil in the latest part of the judicial trilogy opened around the alleged corruption in Manilva Town Hall stitched together during the terms of office of Izquierda Unida (IU). The case will be tried in early 2022 and will once again put in the dock the alleged mastermind of the various cases under investigation: the now former mayor Antonia Muñoz, the first in a sequence of four consecutive mayors with serious legal problems. Muñoz, along with three of her councillors, faces 15 years of disqualification for continued misuse of public office, while the request is reduced to 10 years in the case of the municipal legal adviser. The accusations are founded on one specific article: article 91 of Law 7/1985 of 2 April Regulating the Bases of Local Government, which sets out the «constitutional principles» that must govern any public recruitment process for a civil servant or employee. This is because it is the persistent absence of the requirements of «equality, merit and capacity, and publicity» that the Public Prosecutor’s Office considers proven. The Public Prosecutor’s Office, however, goes further and, in its indictment, to which El Confidencial has had access, confirms a strategy sustained over time with the aim of keeping the left-wing coalition in power in the only municipality it governed on the Costa del Sol.

The western Málaga coast has been, with the odd exception led by an independent, two-party territory. From Torremolinos to Estepona, the PP and PSOE have ‘shared out’ the mayoralties of the most populous municipalities in the province, so for IU to take a small portion of territory in the most cosmopolitan area was a small ideological victory for the party and its leaders.

The accused, «with full knowledge of the regulations», signed «hundreds» of contracts in which the legal principles that must govern any selection process were breached «in order to create a clientelist network of voters that would guarantee the governing party’s continuation in power at that time». The prosecuted politicians allegedly carried out this strategy through the Town Hall and various bodies in which it was represented. The leaders of Izquierda Unida did nothing despite the signs of corruption.

The complaint that in late 2009 exposed the so-called Manilva case stated that many of those allegedly hired irregularly were members or sympathisers of IU. The investigators of the Guardia Civil confirmed this, needing 510 pages to document all the suspicious registrations. Around fifteen of them were linked solely to the mayor’s circle; she went as far as appointing a sister and a daughter-in-law to positions of trust.

The investigation of these alleged cases of cronyism, like the other two that led to separate cases that are also before the courts, ran in parallel with the inaction of the top leaders of Izquierda Unida nationally, regionally and provincially: Cayo Lara, Diego Valderas and José Antonio Castro, respectively. After years of investigation, visits by the Guardia Civil to the Town Hall and summonses to court for the local government team, they maintained their support for Muñoz despite the mass of evidence hanging over her administration. Even a budding Alberto Garzón, a young member of parliament for Málaga who already claimed the role of champion against corruption, stayed silent for a long time. The Public Prosecutor’s Office raises the number of jobs-for-friends cases from the 470 initially documented by the officers of the Guardia Civil’s Property Crimes Group in Málaga to the 602 now set out in the indictment. This document specifies that, between 2007 and 2013, the then mayor and her Human Resources councillor, Diego Díaz, «signed 900 contracts on behalf of the Town Hall without carrying out any selection process, without publicity, without budget allocation and without respecting the principles of equality, merit and capacity, and publicity».

These practices were not confined to the Town Hall and allegedly extended to satellite bodies such as the Fundación de Manilva para el Desarrollo (Funmades), on whose behalf the mayor, from 2007 to 2011, «signed various employment contracts» without meeting the basic legal requirements. As an example of the spread of these allegedly unlawful methods, the prosecutor stresses that, «on 22 January 2008», Antonia Muñoz, as president of the aforementioned foundation, formalised an employment contract with J. C. C. A. «appointing him coordinator of Local Promotion and Development» and «assuming management, administration and organisational duties». To do so, she «relied exclusively on the interest of the person hired in taking the post and on the agreement reached between the two, without complying with any of the principles mentioned above».

Modification of contracts

This ‘modus operandi’ had taken such firm root in the day-to-day running of the municipality that even the legal adviser, Aitor Menoyo, was registered by the main defendant «knowing that the legally established procedures had not been followed for that purpose». This happened on 1 December 2008 and «no job offer was made through a public call and through a competitive examination or selection process». Another of the bodies used was the Club Deportivo Manilva. The prosecutor in the case considers that Muñoz and her then Sports councillor, Francisco Medina, entered into «hundreds of contracts» between March 2007 and the same month of 2011 without observing any of the principles mentioned, or establishing any selection process. «In some cases, following orders from the Human Resources department, which requested that contracts initially signed in the name of the Town Hall be changed and become contracts made by the sports body. Without assessing the suitability of those hired, their merit and capacity». Specifically, Medina signed 149 employment registrations, while Muñoz signed a total of 28. The trials for the other two cases opened in the Manilva case have been repeatedly postponed.

Sociedad de Comunicación Manilva was allegedly used for this purpose while under the direction of the Media councillor, Emilio López Berenguer, who is accused of signing, on behalf of this body and between 2007 and 2011, hundreds of contracts in breach of the rules stressed above. This councillor, like two others, Diego Urieta and Mario Jiménez, was charged in several proceedings after succeeding Muñoz in office. Jiménez, the latest, has not resigned because of this and remains mayor of the municipality. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, these events constitute a continued offence of misuse of public office by public officials, for which it requests for the four politicians under investigation in the case «special disqualification from public employment or office and from the right to stand for election for a period of 15 years». This requested sentence is reduced to 10 years for the legal adviser as a «necessary collaborator» in an offence of misuse of public office. Judicial sources consulted by this newspaper confirmed that the seven sessions of this trial would begin on 31 January and, if it starts without delay, it would be the first of the three parts into which the Manilva case was divided to reach an oral hearing.

In addition to the statements of the accused, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has requested testimony from 18 people, including three Guardia Civil officers, the Town Hall secretary, the municipal comptroller and the Human Resources manager. It has also requested that many of the more than 14,400 pages making up the proceedings be read out. The trials for the part investigating the alleged transfers of money to an urban development body in the municipality, and the one that will try the awarding of municipal contracts, among others, to companies owned by the former mayor’s husband, have been suspended for various reasons. In the first case, Muñoz and other councillors face a total of 35 years in prison for embezzlement of public funds and continued misuse of public office. In the other, in which seven politicians and the former mayor’s husband are being prosecuted, the Public Prosecutor’s Office is seeking for each defendant two years in prison, four years of special disqualification from public employment or office and a fine of 24 months at 15 euros a day on charges of continued misuse of public office in conjunction with self-interested administration.

Source: El Confidencial

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