astapa case
The judge has released some details of the Astapa investigation
26.06.09 - 12:28 -
ANTONIO BARRIENTOS. The content of some of the former mayor's telephone calls have been made public.
The judge in charge of the Astapa case in Estepona has released some of the details, only six out of a total of 150 volumes, but all the same enough to reveal that irregular financing was common practice at Estepona Town Hall.
Much of the information made public on Thursday consists of the content of recorded telephone conversations. Revealing snippets from these include the former Mayor Antonio Barrientos telling a businessman, “You’ll agree that we’ve been good to you ... and that’s got a price”; or the former councillor Marisa Rodríguez saying: “Don’t you worry, that contract is for you, I’ll make sure of that”.
What has been made clear is that the Astapa investigation stems from a report made in November 2006 by the current mayor, David Valadez, when he was the local Social Welfare councillor. Together with councillor Cristina Rodríguez, who was then in charge of Trade and Industry and now runs the Personnel Department, he handed in an 18-page report explaining “what was going on at Estepona Town Hall” to the National Police’s Tax and Financial Fraud Unit in Madrid. To provide evidence for their accusations they included a recorded telephone conversation and a file containing 292 pages detailing planning deals.
The two councillors who uncovered the suspected irregularities mentioned in their report to the police that Estepona Town Hall disguised its illegal dealing by operating three accounting systems. Book ‘A’ included the legal accounts, with income from local taxes and expenditure as planned. Meanwhile book ‘B’ was reserved for the alleged illegal commissions paid by property developers, and a third book ‘C’ dealt with funds syphoned off into personal bank accounts.
“Corruption is so accepted and taken for granted that it is all seen as normal and carried out quite openly”, said the two councillors in their report that was to result in the arrest of many of their fellow councillors. After the visit to Madrid the relationship between Valadez and the then mayor Barrientos chilled to the extent that Valadez was stripped of his role as spokesperson and removed from the Local Government Commission.
According to the documents released by the judge this week, it appears that Estepona Town Hall funded much of its activity with “donations” from businesses which a police report has described as “abusive”.
These funds were apparently controlled by the former PES councillor Manuel Reina and José Flores, the former head of the mayor’s office who seemed to hold a position of more relevance than the councillors themselves in the municipal hierarchy.
It was apparently quite commonplace for the Town Hall to ask firms with interests in the town to fund activities such as concerts, congresses and sporting events or even paying for the Christmas lights. In other words the business people who had recently made planning deals with the local authority were asked to make a “donation”.
Clearly not all of these contributions went to pay for activities judging from the lifestyles led by some of those arrested in the Astapa case which were not compatible with a councillor’s salary.
