Transparency International, the worldwide anti-corruption organisation, in conjunction with the Fundación Ortega y Gasset, has released it’s 2009 list of the most transparent townhalls across Spain.
Almería is 3rd from the bottom, at 108 out of 109 (only Salamanca and Fuengirola are worse).
El Ejido, for some reason, comes in at nº 57.
The test involves how much municipal information is publicly available. T.I. sent the 110 biggest towns in Spain a questionnaire asking them how they publish over 80 different reports that are supposed to be publicly available; they then investigated to see how easy it was to obtain this information for a member of the public.
Almería didn’t even bother to send the questionnaire back (along with Fuengirola, Salamanca and Valencia).
In Monday’s La Voz, which I have just got around to persuing over a freshly baked croissant and a coffee, page 3 is given over, not to lovely Sally (21) from Essex, but to a somber reflection on “Brits take to the internet their fear of demolitions of illegal homes”.
In an politically charged piece, the paper appears to say that AUAN, the urban abuse pressure group, has issued a false press release relative to the proposed demolition of 98 homes in the Almanzora valley, and says that Brits in the area appear to be scaremongering. It singles out the website typicallyspanish.com as an “anglosaxon” online newspaper which makes politically charged comments on the situation without fact checking. I hope typicallyspanish.com has their paperwork up to date now that they’ve come to the unwanted attention of Those In Power.
According to the reporter, the Mayor of Albox has denied all knowledge of the 98 homes, as has the Junta, and La Voz claims that the whole press release (which they published in full late last week) was based on speculation over a court investigation and has been blown out of proportion.
While acknowledging the importance of dealing with the illegal homes, and admitting that many people are living in fear, the paper warns that the general public should take care to make a critical distinction between official news released from the Junta or courts, versus scaremongering press releases from self interested groups.
Interestingly enough, the article is illustrated by a picture of the ex-municipal secretary of Arboleas on the day the townhall was raided by police investigation allegations of corrupt planning processes in the municipality.
Frankly, I suspect that La Voz got in trouble for printing last weeks AUAN press release, and are now desperatly trying to recoup political favour by backtracking. Could be awhile before the subject is broached again…
Here’s the page (click for a full size image)
Later - interestingly enough, shortly after posting this, I received the following press release from the AUAN:
Junta includes AUAN in working party to find solution to illegal housing problem
In an informal 30 minute meeting with a delegation from AUAN, the Minister for Planning and Housing of the Junta de Andalucia, Rosa Aguilar, announced the creation in September of a working party to find and agree solutions to problems arising from the illegality of homes in the Almanzora Valley.
The working party will include representatives of the regional government, the mayors of the valley and representatives of the affected families, specifically AUAN.
AUAN is satisfied with this new development which represents one of our key demands. We look forward to actively seeking solutions to the serious problems faced by our members in an open and transparent manner.
We encourage all those affected by this issue to register to vote to help maintain pressure on the working party to deliver results.
The meeting took place on Tuesday 20th July in Albox when the Minister attended the ceremony to mark the opening of the towns’ new bridge.
Mayor Enciso of El Ejido, the chap accused of stealing 150 million euros from townhall coffers has been released from Albolote jail in Granada pending his trial on a bail of 300,000 €.
Enciso was arrested last October along with 20 other people, accused of paying inflated and false invoices to a network of false companies. He has constantly been denied bail as he was considered to be a flight risk. No news yet on why the Judge has changed his mind.
He has managed to come up with the money on the same day as the Judge signed the order (how? that was quick!) and passed over a suitcase full of crumpled notes (joke!) along with his passport.
He must report to the local court on a weekly basis and cannot leave the country.
He is expected to return to his desk at the townhall where he will continue signing false invoice *cough* running his town.
Life should get interesting back in El Ejido as he starts to look for his ex-friends who ratted him out. A number of his cronies have still be denied bail.
At yesterday’s townhall meeting in El Ejido, two workers and a union rep stripped off and ran around the townhall meeting shouting “you’ve taken everything including our underpants!”
They were protesting against the non payment of back wages to 87 gardeners employed by a subcontracter of municipal services company El Sur.
You will remember that lots of people were taken to jail after nicking 150 million of public money in El Ejido. This has lead to confusion, and non payment.
Ironically enough, some of the workers, who haven’t been paid by the townhall, are having their possessions embargoed for not paying rates back to the townhall. They, quite sensibly, argue that the townhall can take the money out of what is owed to them.
There was also a riot outside the townhall when a coachload of OAP’s were put in front of the townhall to keep the 87 gardeners out.
Well, at least they recognise that they’ve destroyed Andalucia as a second home residence by allowing builders to put up lots of shoddy, illegal homes then bugger off scot free. Then knocking the homes down with compensating the expats who have bought them. Which, as you can imagine, has not gone down well with the expats who have warned everyone not to come to Spain.
The solution? Apparantly, instead of legalising the homes already built and punishing the people who put them up, is to gather all the unsold homes and legalise them, before trying to flog them, thus allowing the builders to recoup costs and build more.
People who have already brought in Andalucia can go whistle.
Sooner we get rid of the PSOE the better. Incompetent bunch of “b”ankers. Juan Espadas, our local Housing Honcho, has admitted “there is no solution in sight” for the 6000+ illegal homes in the Almanzora.
I don’t know, it’s always something. Now the police have swooped on Arboleas townhall.
A bunch of plainclothes officers from the Policia Autonomica turned up and started pocketing paperwork.
Why the PA? They’ve never done anything interesting before. Since the PSOE rule Arboleas, I imagine it’s so they can destroy anything overly incriminting.
The twenty people arrested yesterday in El Ejido’s corruption sting by a Madrid judge -investigation ongoing since 2007, it seems- all spent a cosy night together in jail.
They were arrested in El Ejido, Seville and Madrid – and all seem to be family. Basically, it’s the:
-Mayor (Juan Enciso, the man who bankrupted El Ejido), his wife and daughter;
-José Aléman, the Interventor Municipal, (city auditor), and his wife (they got married in the Madrid Ritz in what La Voz calls a “glam wedding”), José’s brother and wife;
-Jesús Aragón, boss of several companies
-Ambrioso Cuevas, boss of several companies, his best friend Juan Antonio Galán Eslava, Juan’s wife and his daughter;
-José Amate Rueda, ex boss of Elsur (now boss of other municipal companies) with his wife along his son, two daughters and their husbands.
The scam, which El País says netted around 150 million euros over the last six years seems to be paying municipal funds for false contracts and pocketing the cash. Nice and neat. Codeword is: Operacion Poniente.
The PAL have been thrown out of the Diputación (county council) after the PSOE broke the coalition they had with them. Much shock, horror and the usual hand wringing from all sides.
About 60 National Police sealed off the townhall, twenty homes and 12 companies yesterday, while investigators from Madrid, accompanied by tax inspectors, seized documents and computers. Everything is being shipped to Madrid on orders of the Judge. Wire taps on people’s phones have been ongoing most of the year it seems, the investigation started in early 2007. This could roll on for years, although I expect Enciso will be out back running the place in a few days – he’s been running El Ejido since 1991 and the Spanish have a relaxed attitude towards corrupt public officials (the attitude isn’t so much why did he do it?, rather bloody idiot got careless).
Enciso, despite having stellar election results every year, is Not Liked – socialist newspapers across the board are unanimous in remembering him as a “brute – even ill educated” (El País). Who also remember how in El Ejido’s race riots he “ecohed the racist and xenophobic remarks by white farm owners in the area”.
I did enjoy this opinion quote in La Voz: Enciso, possibly with his head in his hands, must be remembering when he was no more than a simple young reseller of second rate fruit and veg.
Or this one: Municipal cleaners outside [the townhall] did not know if they were to sweep up the cigarette butts or the footsteps of fear marked on the pavement outside.
I’m told several other nearby cities had a marathon shredding of paperwork session last night….
The ex-boss of IDEA in Granada, a public company, got into trouble after all of his 27 employees presented an internal complaint about the use of earthy little phrases like “You do whatever my cock tells you to do”.
Also wouldn’t celebrate birthdays, apparantly. Shock!
15% pay cut and kicked back to the ranks. Also banned from Granada for three years, despite his wife being a PSOE Party Boss.
The dark days of GIL are put behind Marbella as the town faces a fresh new future. 16,500 homes are to be legalised and developers will be chased for compensation payments from the town hall.
Mayor of Zurgena and 24 more charged in urban corruption case
Judge David Villagrá of Huercal Overa Court Nº 2 has allowed charges to be placed against the Mayor of Zurgena, Cándido Trabalón, his second in command Manuel Tijeras, and 23 other people.
It has been 15 months since Guardia Civil officers swooped on the sleepy little town of Zurgena, arresting the mayor and several other people. During the operation they closed the town hall and the offices of several promoters in the area, seizing computers and documents. The case has been ongoing, and yesterday evening the investigating Judge announced the results.
The investigating judge has identified nine separate counts of abuse of public office (prevariacación), bribery of a public official, crimes against the planning process, falsification of documents, carrying out of actions prohibited of an elected official, selling of favors and public disobedience.
He therefore has allowed charges to stand and the public prosecutor has ten days to state their case for a preliminary hearing which may take place in the Provincial Courts. However, the full case is not expected to be heard until the end of the year at earliest.
Under Spanish court rules, an Investigating Judge directs a police investigation. If the Judge is satisfied that a crime may have been committed, the file is handed to the Public Prosecutor (Fiscalía) and sent to a different court for trial. If the Judge does not believe there to be sufficient evidence for a case he can “archive” the case and stop proceedings.
Defense lawyers for all 25 charged people say they are optimistic about the trial. When asked about the famous secret recordings taken by police officers, they said that in their opinion these tapes would not be admissible in court due to the poor sound quality. At least one lawyer intends to make a complaint of entrapment.
The Judge’s charges against Mayor Cándido states that he may be guilty of “allowing illegal building licenses to be approved through the process of silencio administrativo” (when a public administration does not reply to a request for a license, allowing the applicant to assume that permission has been granted) and “and bribery by building five detached villas in Los Menchones, these buildings being constructed by promoters who in turn gave the Mayor a consideration for his approval of the construction works”. He is also accused of falsifying documents, as according to the Judge “he certified the antiquity of a house when it was obvious it had been built subsequent to the claimed date”.
Manuel Tijeras, Councillor for Urbanisation, is accused of “signing documents allowing the segregation of land for building on rustic land” and for “granting building licenses knowing full well that the projects did not comply with building regulations and / or were on rustic land”. He is also accused of using a luxury vehicle owned by a well known local builder, Antonio López, for whom the prosecution claims he was “working undercover while in the townhall” as well as amounts of money in exchange for building licenses, granted with the justification of (non existent) favorable reports and signed off by the Mayor with false antiquity reports (which would allow them to be granted escrituras).
Eight former and current councillors of the P.A. and PSOE parties (between 2003 and 2007 the Partido Andalucista ruled in a coalition with the PSOE local party) have been charged, along with several tecnicos and public officials from the townhall, and the heads of several building companies, namely: Tomás Zurano (Zuydi), Antonio Lopez (Procosona) and Francisco Javier (New Medina Villas).
Four civil servants from the town hall are among those charged, accused of different crimes relating to them issuing false reports or documents, as well as two architects who worked for both the townhall and builders. The Secretary of the townhall has been charged, as has a tecnico who also had an interest in New Medina Villas.
Other companies involved in the trial, which belonged to the people charged as subsidiaries of the three main companies, were Dizu (owned by Tomás Zurano), Solanor, Welcome to Spanish Home, Procosona and Colyar.
The shape of the trial, and the expected timescale, will not be known until later this month after an initial oral hearing at Huercal Overa. The case is expected to be sent to the Provincial Audience and it is expected that all 25 people will be trialled at the same time in a joint case.
The case gives a nasty feeling of small town politics where everybody is related to everybody else and a web of deceit and corruption was woven, all in order to build as many homes as possible without having to worry too much about the permits. Is this feeling true? Well, owners of the estimated 6,000 illegal homes in the area may be excused for jumping to conclusions, but only time -and Spanish Justice- will tell the truth.
Full list of charges:
-Candido Trabalón: abuse of office, bribery, abuse of urban planning and forgery
-Pedro María Soto: Bribery
-José Juan Sánchez: abuse of urban planning rights
-Juan Morales: abuse of urban planning rights
-José A. Ramos: abuse of urban planning
-Emilia Jimenez: abuse of urban planning
-Aniceto López: abuse of urban planning
-Manuel Tijeras: abuse of office, bribery and forgery
-Miguel Marín: abuse of urban planning
-Tomás Zurano: Bribery, buying of favours and abuse of urban planning
-Josefa Sanchez: abuse of urban planning
-Pedro Segura: abuse of urban planning
-Trinidad Lidueña: abuse of urban planning
-Francisco Díez: Bribery and prohibited negotiations
Juan José Galera: Crimes against ordering of the territory.
Francisco Nortes: Crimes against ordering of the territory.
José M. Nortes: Crimes against ordering of the territory.
Faustino Mellado: Crimes against ordering of the territory and disobedience.
Adoración Gómez: Crimes against ordering of the territory.
Antonio López: Crimes against ordering of the territory and bribery.
Carlos Berbel: Prohibited activities and abuse of office.
José M. Garcia: Crimes against ordering of the territory.
Fco. Salvador: Prohibited activities
José M. Diaz: Crimes against ordering of the territory.
Miguel Marín: Abuse of power in the planning process.
or see a ![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
