They and seven other defendants agree with the Prosecutor’s Office a sentence of less than one year to avoid going to jail
MADRID, 17 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former councilor of the PSOE in Seville Manuel Gómez and the former socialist adviser Domingo Enrique Castaño have recognized in the trial that is being held in the National High Court for the part of the ‘Madeja case’ relating to the Seville City Council that they have received money from the company Fitonovo to favor it by award public contracts.
To questions from the defense of the PSOE, a formation accused of being a profit-making participant, Manuel Gómez has assured that he gave, together with the former adviser and in turn former director of the Public Highway area of the Sevillian consistory, money to the party from Fitonovo.
The PSOE lawyer has asked him what total amount he gave to the party, to which the former councilor, who at first stated that it was 30,000 euros in 2007, later said he did not remember if there was more.
Both the former councilor and the former socialist adviser have pleaded guilty in exchange for a reduction in the sentences required by the Prosecutor’s Office, which requested more than a year and a half and which, finally, has reduced their requests to below one year in prison and to a maximum of 1,800 euros the fines, compared to the initials of more than 4,200, when appreciating the extenuating circumstances of confession and undue delay.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office has reached an agreement with ten of the defendants in this piece of the ‘Madeja case’, except with the former United Left (IU) councilors Antonio Rodrigo and José Manuel García and the former PP mayor Joaquín Peña, who will testify in the session in the morning.
Nine of the defendants have admitted their role in the events, for which they have been found guilty of bribery or influence peddling. For the tenth, José Gutiérrez, the prosecutor has requested that he be acquitted by prescription, since he disassociated himself from Fitonovo in 2003.
As the prison sentence they have admitted is less than two years, the prosecutor has asked the court of the National High Court to suspend the sentences so that they do not go to prison.
Among those who have also agreed with the Prosecutor’s Office for less than a year in prison and lower fines are Antonio Miguel Ruiz, former IU adviser; Francisco Amores, former head of the Parks and Gardens service; the foreman Manuel Pineda; Francisco Luis Huertas, head of maintenance at Parque María Luisa, and businessmen or representatives of companies such as Carlos Alfonso Lozano, Juan Antonio Salas and Juan José López.
During the previous questions, the PSOE has not spoken and the defense of IU, which has argued that its alleged participation would have prescribed, has denied that the party received money from Fitonovo.
IU did not have “any benefit, she did not incorporate money into her accounting or her assets,” her lawyer has advanced, who has asked to provide audit reports from the Court of Auditors as evidence to show that “there is no cheating or cardboard “.
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 permanent favor treatment towards the company”, to agree to pay 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.
