The head of the Court of Instruction number 1 of San Javier, in two cars notified this Wednesday, concludes the investigation of the first two pieces of the so-called ‘Valhalla case’ opened by a complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office for urban corruption in the municipality of San Javier, being municipal councilor José HS
The facts that are the object of the first piece, number 1, would, according to the investigating judge, constitute a crime of prohibited negotiations by public officials, in competition with a crime of illicit association, committed through the commercial Gruparq 3 SL, as well as crimes of bribery, prevarication and influence peddling committed by the former municipal architect of San Javier, MABJ with respect to the Peinsa and Inmonova projects.
Specifically, the instructor points out three architects, then with functions in different municipalities, among them San Javier, who decide to create a professional architecture society that would manage the projects commissioned by the three independently. And that, in addition, “could avoid the eventual incompatibility due to the position of municipal technical architect of the San Javier city council of one of them.”
According to the account of events contained in the resolution, “for this purpose they used their wives because they were people of the utmost trust of each of the architects mentioned, although attention cannot be avoided on the fact that that those investigated are people without technical qualification of architects or engineers, acting as mere extras in the plot conceived by their husbands, being precisely those investigated those who effectively created the Gruparq company as joint administrators, thus interposing their physical and legal personality against that of their respective husbands.
The investigation proceedings reveal, in the opinion of the instructor, that “the three architects function as a true joint office that, without said interposed company, would be subject to the extension of incompatibility of any of its members in their respective municipal terms.”
And, furthermore, “through the municipal functions they carried out, they created a kind of positive and favorable expectation of the project’s completion and the speed of its processing to the extent that they guaranteed clients that the projects carried out by them and through Gruparq 3 SL would be resolved more quickly and in a more favorable way than others, being able to guarantee the benevolence and administrative fluency that they would have in the City Council in question before third parties and potential clients if the projects were entrusted to them »
The magistrate highlights at this point that “the foregoing resulted in the majority of urban projects that can be classified as large in the area of San Javier being entrusted to said study”, and figures them at 13 out of the 17 “that are they developed in the years of operation of the architectural firm ». Among others, the partial plans of El Recuerdo, Rotonda El Mirador, Roda Golf, Senoría de la Roda, Tierras Nuevas or El Mirador Sur.
In addition, the instructor points out four companies from among the promoters and construction companies that contracted with the three architects through Gruparq 3: Peinsa, Grupo Ladera, Grupo Martínez Esparza and Inmonova; focusing the first piece only on the eventual criminal responsibility in relations with the first and last.
Regarding Peinsa, the instructor understands that the execution of urban projects in San Javier drafted by JPST, a de facto MABJ partner, understands that, taking advantage of his status as a municipal architect, he informed and promoted these projects, «arriving in the case of the Partial Plan Señorío of Roda being executed before being definitively approved the planning and management instruments that made it possible, sometimes with licenses contrary to the urban regulations ”. In addition, the car underlines, the company had a turnover of 3.9 million euros between the three architects from 2001 to 2007.
With regard to Inmonova, the magistrate reports in the order that MABJ acted on behalf of the selling party of two farms to this company, which later formed part of the Partial Plan Senda del Recuerdo, which underwent numerous modifications and extensions reported by that .
To prepare the above factual account, explains the instructor, the existing evidence collected in the case has been taken into account. Among the proceedings carried out on which it relies, the statement of the architects, their wives and the two promoters investigated stands out; the workers of Gruparq 3 SL; and, in the documentary field, in addition to the documentation intervened in the registry, the AEAT report in which the accounts of those investigated are collected.
And the resolution concludes by ordering that the proceedings continue against the two of the three architects, MABJ, JMSM, the third died; their wives, MTFP, MAEM and IMVV; and the legal representatives of the aforementioned companies, JGJ and EEG
Ladera Dos Mares and the three industrial estates of La Manga
In a second order, which closes the instruction of the second piece of the procedure, the instructor considers “incidentally accredited” that the San Javier Town Planning Service, managed by the then mayor, JHS, and directed by the former municipal architect, MABJ , acted in La Manga del Mar Menor, “as if the industrial estates were simple urban plots”, instead of action units that need prior management and urbanization. “Allowing in this way that it is built on non-buildable land, at least directly, and to the detriment of the City Council, since it does not receive the part of the 10% of use that corresponds to it according to Law”, explains the resolution. Action that, according to the magistrate, “suited different interests, mainly promoters” related to the mayor and the architect. In this case, Ladera 2 Mares SA y SL
The order chronologically describes the administrative steps that would have been carried out to replace the urbanization project: parceling license, transfer file, building license and, finally, ordinary works annex, where «the City Council limits itself to requiring the developer to carry out small works to adapt the plot to turn it into a plot of land as if it were consolidated land ».
In addition, the order indicates as another criminal act that motivates the formation of this piece the urban agreement signed by the mayor and the legal representative of Ladera 2 Mares del Mediterráneo SA, in 2004. In which the San Javier City Council accepts « a sort of swap of land “, giving the company a total of 45,463 square meters, destined for a general system of public free spaces in exchange for a land of 68,644 square meters,” which they call the local public domain, which is actually Terrestrial maritime public domain, since the demarcation produced in 1969 and that, for legal purposes, would be non-existent ”.
Facts all of them that could be constitutive of the crimes of embezzlement of public funds, falsification in public document, influence peddling and prevarication, as well as a crime against the planning of the territory of articles 320 and 404 CP. In which, in addition to MABJ and JHS, STS, ANM and FJGN municipal technicians, and AJSR and ALGS, administrators of Ladera Dos Mares SA and SL participated.
Among the indications that have been revealed by the investigation procedures carried out, and that have allowed the instructor the account of facts reflected in the order of transformation to an abbreviated procedure, municipal reports, aerial photographic reports that appear in the Civil Guard report, reports Demarcation of Coasts, plans of the documentation seized from Gruparq, wiretapped telephone conversations, and, finally, several faxes between those investigated and related companies.
The third piece
In 2019, the formation of three separate cases was agreed “in order to achieve an activation of the process and a streamlining of the case, thus facilitating a rapid termination of the procedure, not only to reach the trial phase with respect to those investigated with respect to those that there are indications of criminality, but also to avoid the presence of those investigated whose possible indications have not borne fruit to sustain the issuance of a future order of transformation into ordinary procedure. It remains to conclude the instruction of the third piece, focused on the performance of the then mayor, to determine if there was abuse and prevalence of public office for his benefit.
.