Give ten days to the Prosecutor’s Office to present an indictment against the taxpayer or to request the file
MADRID, 3 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The investigating magistrate of the Supreme Court Andrés Palomo has agreed to proceed against the PP deputy Alberto Casero for the crimes of prevarication and embezzlement of public funds in relation to five contracts he signed when he was mayor of Trujillo (Cáceres) in 2017 and 2018 without being subject to legally established administrative procedures.
In his order to pass to the abbreviated procedure, to which Europa Press has had access, the magistrate gives the Prosecutor’s Office ten days to request the opening of the oral trial by formulating his indictment or requesting the file.
The magistrate explains in his resolution that the facts attributed to Casero “are related to actions carried out in his capacity as mayor of the Trujillo City Council and contracting body therein between March 2017 and December 2018 when arranging contracts with different people and entities of service, sponsorship or agreements, breaching all kinds of formalities required for that purpose by the regulations”.
He points out that, although this regulation in some cases did not establish “demanding validity requirements” -in general they were minor contracts-, “however it did establish formalities aimed at at least establishing their existence in the consistory by opening the corresponding file containing the due resolution by the contracting body approving the expense, with justification of its need and the subsequent contribution of the invoice corresponding to the works object of the contract”.
For Palomo, Casero’s conduct falls within the crime of administrative prevarication. “It not only supposes repeated and admitted irregularities, but a way of proceeding of the regulated that identifies his voluntarism regardless of any interpretation with a loophole of rationality of the legal system,” he points out.
And it adds that “verbal contracts were prohibited or without any processing or publicity in the cases that the amount required it, circumvention of control mechanisms, direct assumption of payments for the integrity of the services that, in addition to newspapers, were provided to the entity in of which the municipality was only a part”.
On the other hand, the investigator considers that the facts also fit into a crime of embezzlement of public funds of article 432 of the Penal Code with the wording in force at the time of the facts. This, “sanctioned the authority or public official who for profit steals the funds or public effects that he is in charge of due to his duties.”
It indicates that according to the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court “subtracting must be interpreted as appropriation without the intention of reimbursement (…) equivalent to separating, extracting, removing or stripping the flows or effects, removing them from their destination or diverting them from the needs of the service to make them their own “.
“In short, it is about behaviors in which the authority or the official who is in charge of the funds by reason of their functions, far from allocating them to the fulfillment of the planned public attentions, separates them from them, and extracting them from the control public, for profit he incorporates them into his patrimony making them his own, or consents that another do so”, he adds.
In line, and assessing whether the latest reform of the Criminal Code that modifies the wording of the crime of embezzlement affects this specific case, the instructor points out that “it is not the ideal time” to enter into it.
However, it does indicate that, in order to enable the defense of the person being investigated, the Trial Chamber “could consider, in its case, the alternative of article 252 with an aggravating circumstance of a public official in relation to article 250. And it adds to this variant an second, “the feasibility of article 433 in relation to those items derived from agreements or contracting of services when they have been effectively provided and where, even if partial, falls within the competence of the City Council.”
The magistrate concludes the investigation of the case once the Appeals Chamber has considered an appeal by the appraiser against the order of the instructor, dated January 16, which denied the request for annulment, filing and dismissal of the case open against him for alleged crimes of prevarication and embezzlement, and that it denied that the judicial investigation period indicated in the law had expired (maximum period of 12 months from the beginning of the case except extension due to complexity).
In its order, the Chamber declared that the investigation phase of this case ended on July 15, 2022, as the period established by law had elapsed, so that, consequently, the investigative measures after that date could not be founded. the resolutions that the instructor should adopt regarding the continuation of the process or its filing.
In relation to this matter, the investigator explains in his order that all the evidence that appears in the case, was already working in the Trujillo Court and was sent with the reasoned memory on the jurisdiction of this Second Chamber, and even to a large extent was apart from the documentation that the Prosecutor’s Office sent to the Court with the complaint that gave rise to the initiation of the Preliminary Proceedings, which scrupulously observes the decision of the Appeals Chamber to deal exclusively with the investigative proceedings carried out with prior to July 15, 2022.
It was in March 2022 when the Supreme Court decided to open a case against Casero. The court reviewed in its order the reasoned statement of the Trujillo court, which opened preliminary proceedings by virtue of a complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office regarding certain contracts, agreements or agreements entered into in 2017 and 2018 by Casero with third parties.
According to the documentary and testimonial evidence provided by the court, the aforementioned contracting acts were carried out by Casero without subjecting himself to the administrative procedure provided for it, for which reason he would have committed to pay various amounts without notifying the City Council and without the necessary reports.
The court pointed out, in turn, that in March 2017 he hired a psychologist hiding it from the City Council, without providing the contract, without a contract file, without a report on the need for the service and without approval of the expense.
In September 2017, he signed a contract with the president of the Peruvian Chamber of Commerce in Spain committing the City Council to pay 25,000 euros, without notifying the economic and legal services of the City Council, without the agreement being previously approved and without submit it to public information or be published in the BOE.
That same year, Casero verbally agreed to contribute 18,000 euros to an event organized by the Bon Vivant Cultural Association, without following any procedure and without informing the City Council services. In June 2018, he signed a sponsorship contract with the same association committing himself to the contribution of 18,000 euros, also assuming other costs, without following any contracting procedure.
The reasoned exposition also included two other facts. A contract in 2018 with the company Icaro Consultores en Comunicación, SLU, for the organization of an event for an amount of 14,303 euros plus VAT, without informing the competent services and without following the proper procedure. And another contract, from that same year, with Radio Interior SL –for communication and promotion of the Trujillo Cheese Fair– for an amount greater than 15,000 euros, resorting to the procedure of the minor contract when, due to the amount, it should be tendered in open procedure.
