Posts Tagged corruption
Another lively day in El Ejido
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.
Bizarre.
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Too little, too late
Is this, perchance, a joke on the Junta’s part?
Junta sets up real estate network to sell legal properties to expats
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.
Police seize paperwork from Arboleas
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.
Read the story: Police swoop on Arboleas townhall.
A family affair in El Ejido
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….
Junta shifts dictator boss (note: shift, not fire his ass)
http://thereader.es/en/andalucia-news-stories/333-the-junta-moves-qdictatorialq-public-official.html
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.
Marbella approves PGOU to legalise illegal homes
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.
Oh, 1,500 homes will still be demolished (500 of them lived in) but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, as they say….
Mayor of Zurgena and 24 more charged in urban corruption case
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.
Spain’s spymaster quits in corruption row
Alberto Saiz, head of the C.N.I., Spain’s secret agency, has quit only two months after being reappointed for afurther term as the agency’s head after being accused of spending public money on funding his own lavish lifestyle.
Spies have come forward to complain that they were being used “to ferry his family around” rather than fight terrorism, according to leaked reports to daily “El País” newspaper.
Head of Extranjeria in Murcia arrested for selling residence permits
Hot on the case reported in Huelva (where the head of the Traffic police was arrested for selling forged driving licenses) comes a new case in Murcia: The head of the Extranjeria department (Inspector Jefe de la Segunda Actividad de la Brigada de Extranjeria y Documentacion de Murcia, a certain Diego de Gea, which deals with immigrants, residence permits and the like) has been arrested for selling off residencias and other such papers.
Something seems to have tripped off a wave of investigations; maybe Lenox, as well as his driving license, got his residencia off Diego? 
El Algarrobico vanishes under Greenpeace netting
El Algarrobico, everybodies favourite hotel on the beach in Carboneras, disappeared under 1800o m2 of green netting as Greenpeace yet again called for the expropiation and demolition of this half built hotel on the beach.
Some 60 Greenpeace volunteers turned up to help out, and were quickly surrounded by a “large” number of police and Guardia units after the Azata del Sol (the owners of the hotel) watchmen called for help, but were permitted to finish off their protest peacefully.
This is the forth major “attack” on the hotel by Greenpeace, who are determined to keep this hotel (allegedly illegal, built without permits on the beach) in the forefront of the public mind and not allow the Government to quietly open the hotel.
In related news, an official Government legal analysis of the “El Algarrobico” situation advised the central government against expropiation of the hotel until the legal path had been exhausted. Or the hotel legalised and opened, of course.
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