Asturias Forum is costing to react, after last Friday, the judge of the Provincial Court of Asturias acquitted the former president of the Principality, former vice president of the central government and former Minister of Development, Francisco Álvarez-Cascos, of a continuous crime of undue appropriation For the alleged diversion of party funds, which he himself founded, to his personal assets.
These were the reasons why he sat on the bench who once was the right hand of José María Aznar, accused of his former political party, chaired since 2018 by the mayor of Gijón, Carmen Moriyón, from where they encrypted at 219,000 euros the economic damage caused. The Prosecutor’s Office, on the other hand, estimated in 181,648 euros the amount of the Álvarez-Cascos had appropriated expenses outside political life, such as entries to tennis parties of their children, meals, mattresses, curtains or entries to museums.
The clock had not reached at half past five in the afternoon when, last Friday, after the devastating sentence, the Forum Board of Directors sent a brief statement to the media to reinvindicate their good work, having taken the Courts to its founder, and keeping a scrupulous respect for judicial decisions. Arguments that Moriyón herself repeated this weekend, without leaving the script, asked by journalists in an act of the match in the Asturian Mining Basin.
The position that the party maintains is, at the moment, the same one that they have been defending since last Friday and that in no case allows to conclude whether or not the political formation will resort to the sentence issued by the third section of the Asturian audience, chaired by Javier Domínguez Begea, beyond what may be understood as the statement “The Directive Commission of Forum Asturias has declared that it has fulfilled its political, ethical and moral duty after the acquittal of its former leader ”.
This Monday, from eldiario.es Asturias we have re -transferred the same question and the answer continues to be “without news for the moment.” And it is that the sentence is not firm, and therefore comes appeal before the Superior Court of Justice of Asturias, for which they have ten business days to count from the notification of the order. That is, they still have time until the end of next week to decide whether or not they present appeal.
The reasons wielding the sentence to acquit the former minister is based, basically, in which all payments made to Álvarez-Cascos passed through the board of directors of the party and, through it, were available to whoever wanted to consult them. Likewise, the judicial order includes that determining whether or not the expenses derived from the development of the accused’s political activity is not something that the court has to explore, since it is not its function to enter into the evaluation of the actions that must be associated with the development of said activity.
Thus, explains the judicial order, the Board of Directors approved at its meeting on May 28, 2012 the regulatory instruction of the Treasury Management, which consisted that the tickets and invoices of the expenses disbursed were presented, joined a sheet of Expenses once accounted for and after being reviewed, the payment made after the signature was approved by the agents authorized in the bank accounts, among which the accused was never.
Tickets and invoices that Forum began to pay its president on May 15, 2011, with a stay at the Hotel La Campana (Llanera), a few days before the then candidate, Francisco Álvarez-Cascos, won the regional elections in Asturias , and continued to pay until October 27, 2018, in this case of the rental of a van. Precisely, a few weeks earlier, on September 29, Carmen Moriyón was elected forum president, promoted in that position by Casco itself, which she would occupy thereafter and until she left the party, three years later, the position of Secretary General of training.
These expenses, according to the sentence, would be difficult for them not to obey the development of activities related to the party according to the agreement that had been achieved with the defendant to guarantee their purchasing level and family reconciliation, unless it is said that the people in charge of That intervention acted with abandonment of their functions.
At the time of its training, in 2011, the Forum Board of Directors was made up of about twenty men and women, among whom were most of the fourteen founders of the party, although not all, including the two supports More ferrous of helmets at that time, Pelayo Roces, who continues to support him, and the former national deputy, Isidro Martínez Oblanca, who aligned with Moriyón in 2021, after abandoning the sector that supported helmets.
Next Friday, February 21, the period enabled for the presentation of the relevant appeal will be fulfilled that, although not firmly, has acquitted Francisco Álvarez-Cascos of the alleged crimes that his former party companions and That the judge does not see as such. Forum sources consulted by this newspaper say that Forum Asturias, finally, it will not resort, because “the sentence has been strong enough to leave the issue to die.”
If so, Francisco Álvarez-Cascos would once again free the action of justice, while Carmen Moriyón was sentenced by the Court of Accounts, for the “misuse of public money”, by imputing the account of the Municipal Group of Forum In the City of Gijón/XIXón, during its previous stage of mayor, the collection of monthly diets as president of Forum, in addition to the salary of mayor he received from the City Council; Bulnes Funicular Tickets for a visit in full autonomous electoral campaign in 2019; or the collection of the diets of one of his advisors in the Consistory.
#Forum #Asturias #maintains #unknown #appeal #sentence #acquitted #helmets
