Since 2018 the courts have been investigating an alleged crime of continued prevarication (deception) in Mogán City Council’s having awarded as much as 16 contracts to 1 explicit legislation agency. Mogán’s deputy mayor, and councillor for City Planning, Mencey Navarro (CIUCA), will go to trial when the Investigating Justice of the Peace’s Court docket quantity 3, in San Bartolomé de Tirajana, has reviewed the collected proof of the fee of a criminal offense of prevarication. A current order from the Sixth Part of the Provincial Court docket of Las Palmas has additionally dismissed an attraction filed by the lawyer Miguel Rodríguez, who was a accomplice on this agency alongside Navarro, by which they’ve tried to have the case thrown out; a movement the Provincial Court docket has denied saying that “there is no such thing as a place” to annul the investigation towards the deputy mayor.
. Tailored from an authentic article by CanariasAhora, featured picture of Mencey Navarro by Alejandro Ramos
The investigating Justice of the Peace of Court docket of Instruction Quantity 3, in San Bartolomé de Tirajana, Francisco Javier Ramírez de Verger Vargas, has already reworked the preliminary proceedings into what is called an “abbreviated process”, the step previous to the official opening of the oral hearings. Beforehand, in March, he dismissed an attraction, once more from the lawyer Miguel Rodríguez, requesting the annulment of this case. The lawyer tried to argue that the orders that had prolonged this investigation have been in truth time-limited, however the decide additionally concluded that his request “has no place”, since he had not beforehand appealed these orders made in Could 2019 and February 2020, neither earlier than the Justice of the Peace himself nor on attraction earlier than the Provincial Court docket of Las Palmas.
The lawyer appealed that order saying “there is no such thing as a place to decree the nullity of two dictated orders.” On this, the Provincial Court docket has underlined that “The Natural Regulation of the Judiciary says: There will be no attraction towards a decision that resolves an incident”, which means, “the attraction made mustn’t have been admitted”. As well as, it provides that the query of whether or not the case is null or not might be answered within the ultimate decision of the case, reasonably than not listening to the case in any respect, “or by different means established by procedural legal guidelines” and remarks that “there is no such thing as a proof” that any attraction has been filed towards these orders whose annulment is now being questioned.
In different phrases, they didn’t communicate up on the time when the investigators deemed it essential to proceed, so they can not now attempt to recommend, greater than two years later, that the investigation ought to have been disbanded.
Justice of the Peace Emilio Moya, in Las Palmas, stresses that the court docket is “conscious” of the defence’s argument, which is that “it may hardly attraction the proceedings when at the moment it was not recorded as being investigated, however with all due respect, the legislation doesn’t point out exceptions. The channel used to ask for the annulment of orders dictated years in the past shouldn’t be the proper one”. Because of this, the Chamber factors out that it may possibly solely resolve on the annulment, “not on the revocation of the orders that haven’t been appealed.”
By the 2019 municipal elections additional proof was coming to mild of attainable irregularities, on a spread of points, and the court docket investigations continued behind closed doorways, assisted by the Guardia Civil, and culminating in a number of arrests in 2020 (Together with Navarro and Bueno), and the seizure of information and pc gear from the Mogán City corridor.
In the summertime of 2021 the investigating Justice of the Peace break up the investigation in to 4 separate elements, related to electoral fraud, irregular appointments, favouritism in contracting and the withholding of proof in the course of the investigations, amongst different points.
The electoral fraud case has been provisionally suspended as a result of a scarcity of enough new proof of an ongoing crime in 2019. An excessive amount of time has handed because the preliminary accusations in 2015. The opposite circumstances involving the present city council members proceed.
This one is all about resolving an accusation that Councillor Mencey Navarro irregularly awarded work to his personal authorized agency and enterprise accomplice, paid for with public cash however with out following the correct procedures, after which allegedly tried to cover it. The awards have been formalised by decrees and at all times for quantities of lower than €18,000, which was the restrict that at the moment was set by Public Sector Contracts Regulation for minor service contracts ( it’s now €15,000).
Editor’s ideas: if a city council grants contracts legally, and within the correct manner, then why would they wish to keep away from exhibiting that in a court docket of legislation?
The Las Palmas Provincial Court docket’s judgement concludes that the attraction should be dismissed “with out prejudice to what could also be agreed on the validity of the February 9, 2019, instruction by which six months elapsed from it’s initiation (August 9, 2018) with out extending the instruction or that of February 9, 2020, by which a 12 months and a half had elapsed because the initiation of the preliminary proceedings with out agreeing to any extension (which then passed off on March 10, 2020).”
Editor’s Interpretation:Principally this investigation has continued, and been deemed crucial, since not less than August 2018, and acquired additional extensions over the next two years or extra, it can’t be annulled just because those that are underneath investigation didn’t know that they have been being scrutinised, the case should proceed to its conclusion as there may be apparently enough proof to justify its being heard in court docket. Whereas there could also be arguments that favour these being investigated, the appeals process they tried to make use of was not the suitable methodology.
Three defendants within the case
The investigating Justice of the Peace from Court docket of Instruction 3, of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, is prosecuting Mencey Navarro (CIUCA), together with a former PSOE councillor Artemi Artiles, a council secretary who was Councillor for Finance in Mogán in the course of the 2015-2019 mandate and who at the moment works as a Sports activities Advisor on the Cabildo de Gran Canaria. They’re charged with a criminal offense of prevarication, although the decide has already filed the case relating to the beneficiary of those awards, Navarro’s enterprise accomplice Miguel Rodríguez Ceballos, who it was that filed this attraction, now denied by the Provincial Court docket.
The decide referred to article 324 of Prison Process Regulation, which offers with the expiration of phrases and extensions to an investigation, and has decided that each one the proceedings carried out with the purpose of clarifying whether or not or not Rodríguez Ceballos participated, in allegedly prison actions, ought to be put to relaxation. Because of this, “in view of the state of the proceedings and, particularly, extensions on the length of the investigation”, the provisional submitting of the case towards this member of the accused has been agreed. That’s to say, whatever the consequence of the case, Rodríguez Ceballos shouldn’t be prone to be blamed. There may be at the moment no query of impropriety on his half.
