They are accused of receiving thousands of euros even in a shoe box
MADRID, 16 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The National Court (AN) sits since Monday on the bench for the piece of the ‘Madeja case’ relating to the Seville City Council 13 people, including former councilors of PSOE, United Left (IU) and PP accused of influence peddling and bribery active in awarding public contracts to the company Fitonovo.
In this trial, the Prosecutor’s Office requests sentences of a year and a half in prison and fines of at least 4,200 euros for former councilors Manuel Gómez (PSOE), Antonio Rodrigo (IU), José Manuel García (IU) and Joaquín Peña (PP and former Director General of the Environment). He also accuses Domingo Enrique Castaño, a former socialist adviser and former director of Vía Pública, and Antonio Miguel Ruiz, a former adviser to the United Left.
In the same way, the National Court is going to judge municipal officials such as Francisco Amores, who was head of the Parks and Gardens service; the foreman Manuel Pineda; Francisco Luis Huertas, head of maintenance for Parque María Luisa; and businessmen or representatives of companies such as Carlos Alfonso Lozano, Juan Antonio Salas, Juan José López and José Gutiérrez.
In its brief of provisional conclusions, collected by Europa Press, the Prosecutor’s Office indicates that the socialists Domingo Enrique Castaño and Manuel Gómez managed to get Fitonovo, “in exchange for the illicit awards and a permanent favor treatment towards the company”, to assume the payment of the party around 160,000 euros, among other things for some works in the Macarena Local Association.
Regarding IU, the Public Ministry details that José Manuel García, Antonio Rodrigo and Antonio Miguel Ruiz received 155,000 euros from Fitonovo –of which 70,000 would have been given to one of them in a shoebox– for numerous adjudications, such as eleven contracts to put artificial turf on soccer fields.
The Prosecutor’s Office describes that Fitonovo created an infrastructure, both operational and accounting, aimed at achieving “irregular public contracts.” Through the commercial structure of the company, he set up a network of contacts with “corrupt officials” who facilitated their hiring and established a “parallel accounting” that fed on false invoicing for, among other purposes, financing “bribes” to public officials. .
The continuity of the corrupt practices between 1995 and 2013, the wide territorial area affected and the multitude of administrations and officials involved “lead to the conclusion that the criminal practices linked to the fraudulent obtaining of contracts, both administrative and private, were a core element of the activity of the company, to such an extent that it can be understood as a corporate veil of said criminal activity”, he assures.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Fitonovo launched a corporate plot that, in parallel to a legal commercial activity, used “illicit means” to obtain contracts, “causing serious damage to the public interest”, since they “perverted” numerous contests “to the detriment ” of the coffers and public interest, causing “serious socioeconomic damage” to the companies that participated legally, “being at a clear disadvantage due to the corrupt practices of the plot,” he points out, coinciding with the investigating judge José de la Mata , which in 2019 opened an oral trial to 88 people for the seven pieces of the case.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office points out that the delivery of commissions lasted for at least fifteen years, which is why it ended up affecting multiple state, regional and local administrations, and involved a “large number of officials and authorities” from places like Seville, Córdoba, Jaén, Cádiz, Huelva, Algeciras, Zaragoza, Valencia, Barcelona, ??Extremadura and the Canary Islands.
As the payment of commissions to officials could not be legally justified, he adds, Fitonovo had a ‘box B’ that was fed by false invoicing with a large number of supplier companies, operations that were recorded in the official accounts pretending to be purchases of supplies or services.
The investigating judge attributed both PSOE and IU the condition of participating for profit in the investigation that affects the Seville City Council for benefiting from the corrupt plot.
