The Barcelona Court reopens the case against Colau for subsidies to social entities

The investigating judge must continue to investigate her for alleged prevarication

BARCELONA, 4 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Barcelona Court has ordered the reopening of the case in which the city's Investigating Court 21 was investigating the mayor, Ada Colau, for alleged irregularities in City Council subsidies to social entities.

In a car consulted by Europa Press this Friday, the magistrates estimate the resource of the Association for transparency and democratic quality, which promoted the case and asked to reopen it when it was filed.

In July, the investigating judge closed the investigation by concluding that the facts of the complaint for alleged embezzlement, prevarication, fraud, prohibited negotiations and influence peddling that originated the case did not entail any criminal offense.

The car known this Friday implies that the investigating judge must resume the investigation at the point where he left it and carry out the proceedings that the complainants claimed.

The magistrates warn that they only consider "initially and provisionally as possibly constituting a criminal offense the granting by the Barcelona City Council of a series of subsidies through the direct concession procedure" between 2016 and 2020, to the Observatory of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Desc), to the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH), to the Alliance Against Energy Poverty (Ape) and to Engineering Without Borders".

They point out that before becoming mayor, Colau had "a close link or relationship" with these entities, as she herself said when declaring as investigated in the case, and added that she had no interest in granting these subsidies.

For its part, the Prosecutor's Office had already asked in May to provisionally file the case and urged "banish the temptation to attribute possible criminal responsibilities to the investigated one on the flimsy argument of being the maximum responsible of the City Council", and also opposed the resource that He asked to reopen the case now.

When appealing the file of the case, the complainant entity criticized that the judge filed the investigation arguing in a generic way the absence of a crime, based mainly on prevarication because it considered it the central accusation, but without specifying the different ones that had been denounced. because he discarded

Now the Barcelona Court disagrees that the instruction "fundamentally revolves" around prevarication and does not believe that its absence will bring down the rest of the case.

They also disagree with the conclusions drawn by the instructor after questioning the City Council's delegated interventor: she declared that she detected irregularities that did not constitute a crime, but the magistrates tell the instructor that discerning it "corresponds to the judges and criminal courts."

In addition, the magistrates consider that with the evidence gathered so far, it cannot be ruled out that the facts involve an alleged crime of prevarication involving Colau and perhaps more people.