The former mayor of the Pontevedra town of Baiona and provincial deputy of the PSOE, Carlos Gómez Prado, has acknowledged this Friday, before the court of the fifth section of the Pontevedra Court that is judging him for removing five fines, that he himself, being a councilor, He signed the files by which these sanctions were filed: “What is done is done, and once they were annulled, he no longer had the power to modify the administrative procedure and be able to activate the fines again,” he declared. The politician is accused of an alleged crime of continued prevarication and another of falsehood.
The former socialist councilor explained that, despite signing the decrees to annul the five complaints, “I was unaware of their content”: “I did it without really knowing what I was signing and without being aware of what it could mean for me.” When asked by the prosecutor, Gómez stressed that when he received the files to sign in his office, he signed his signature without reading what it was about. “I signed without knowing the content of those files,” he said. According to him, it was later, when he received at his house that the fines had been cancelled, that he realized. “I could no longer activate the fines again and annul an administrative act,” the defendant alleged.
The politician assured the court that he had a card that allowed him to park in the area where he was fined, but he did not have it because he had left it in a vehicle that he was repairing in the workshop. Gómez thus tried to dismantle the arguments of the prosecutor, who maintains that this document did not exist at the time of the events and that it was subsequently falsified.
The Prosecutor's thesis was corroborated by several local police officers who testified as witnesses in this trial, who assured that they had never seen the mayor's parking card until the traffic violation complaints were filed between April and June 2021, and that It even lacked a file number, Europa Press reports.
This Friday the other accused, agent Plácido Vieitez, current head of the Local Police, who was an officer (second chief) at the time of the events, also testified. He has acknowledged the existence of a card that authorized the mayor to park in the authorized vehicle area, since it was signed by him because the chief was on vacation. Vieitez, who also faces a sentence of three years in prison and four and a half years of disqualification for alleged prevarication and complicity in the crime of falsifying documents, reported that an order explaining the creation of the card had been posted on the bulletin board. of the mayor's parking lot so that the agents were aware of it. However, the seven police officers who complained in this process indicated in their statements that they were unaware of its existence and that they only saw the card after the mayor was fined five times.
The head of the Local Police admitted that he had previously seen the mayor's car parked in the authorized area despite not having a card. Regarding this, he argued that everyone in the town knew who owned that vehicle and understood that he would not be fined.
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On this day of the trial, several socialist councilors during Gómez's term as mayor also testified as defense witnesses. They have defended that the councilor did have an authorized parking card before the fines. And other City Council workers, from departments such as Social Services or Sports, have assured that there were authorized parking cards so that some employees could park in certain areas and that until 2022 the file number was not specified. For the reporting agents, this lack invalidates the card. The fact that the data was included later supported the complaint they filed against the councilor in 2021.
The trial will be heard for sentencing on January 29 with the final conclusions of the prosecution and defense. After listening to the accused and witnesses, it is possible that the public ministry modifies the terms of its indictment of events that date back to April and June 2021, when Gómez Prado, who now leads the municipal group, was fined. of the PSOE of Baiona after being ousted from the mayor's office in the local elections last May.
The Prosecutor's Office maintains that the parking card presented by the former councilor was subsequently prepared and signed by him and the other defendant with the purpose of evading responsibility. Gómez also provided a report signed by the police officer who also sits on the bench, in which he stated that he knew of the existence of the supporting document and that, therefore, the mayor's car was parked those days and in that area with your knowledge and authorization.
In any case, the public ministry points out that, as appears in the text of the supposedly fraudulent card, the mayor could not park in that loading and unloading area either, but only in areas enabled for this purpose. As a result of these allegations, the investigator of the file, from the ORAL office of the Provincial Council of Pontevedra, archived the sanctioning procedure.
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