The PP demands that León and his mayors be disqualified for 12 and a half years, while the Prosecutor’s Office requests acquittal
The mayor of Torre Pacheco, Antonio León, and his government team will be forced to sit on the bench next week to face an accusation of alleged prevarication. The Fifth Section of the Court, based in Cartagena, plans to start the hearing on Monday against the first mayor of Pacheco and the ten holders of the different departments that concentrate municipal management for having decided to continue the plenary session to approve the municipal budgets , in May 2016, despite apparently being aware that the opposition had not received the mandatory documentation for its analysis in time.
The private accusation, which is carried out by eight mayors of the Popular Party through the lawyer José Antonio Izquierdo, attributes to them an alleged crime of prevarication in competition with another crime against civil rights. He demands that each of these public positions be disqualified for a period of twelve and a half years. At that time, none of them could engage in politics in the event of being convicted.
In turn, the Public Ministry demands the acquittal for all of them, not appreciating a crime in the conduct of the defendants. The Court plans to hold a hearing on Monday in which the defendants will testify and another on Wednesday in which the witnesses will do so.
A controversial plenary
The facts for which all the mayors of Pacheco in government work have ended up in the dock of the accused date back to the Municipal Plenary of May 26, 2016, convened among other issues to study the amendments presented to the Local Budgets and for the their initial approval.
The accusation maintains that the mayor urged to continue with the approval of the Budgets, despite the fact that the opposition did not have the documents in time
The controversy arose when it was stated, by the Popular Party councilors who made up the opposition, that the session had been called without having been provided with all the documentation required by law, since it was not presented at the municipal secretariat until that same day: the liquidation of the previous Budget, the financial economic reports on the forecast of income, the foreseen credit operations and the adequacy of the loans. Nor, apparently, the reports of the Municipal Intervention on the fulfillment of the objective of budgetary stability nor, finally, the project of the General Budget of the City Council for 2016, which was especially relevant.
In such circumstances, the popular councilors were presumably deprived of the necessary material to be able to substantiate their position with certain guarantees, as they denounced in the act of the Plenary. It was then that the municipal secretary, Isidoro Jesús Martínez, after the opportune indication of the comptroller, Carmen Lidia Saura, warned Mayor León that, not having presented the documentation within the legally established terms, the agreement of the Plenary could be null according to to the jurisprudence of the High Court of Justice of the Region of Murcia (TSJRM).
The position that the first mayor would have adopted consisted of proposing that there be a prior vote to establish whether the initial approval of the Budget should remain on the table, pending for the next Plenary Session, or on the contrary, it should proceed to process it in that same session. He himself and his ten councilors from the municipal government, made up of members of the Torre Pacheco Independent Party (PITP) and the socialist mayors, spoke in favor of moving forward, which allowed the General Budget of the City Council for 2016 to be approved in a initial with the same votes.
Days later, the popular filed a contentious-administrative appeal, which was estimated both in the first instance and by the competent chamber of the TSJRM and which caused the annulment of the aforementioned approval of the Budget. With such a resolution already in hand, confirming the irregular processing of the annual accounts in plenary session, the PP already required in 2017 the services of the lawyer José Antonio Izquierdo to file a complaint, aimed at purging possible criminal responsibilities.
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