The mayor of Estepona avoids a jury trial in the case over alleged embezzlement

In the case, the alleged commission of the offences of misconduct in public office and embezzlement is being investigated, the latter being within the jurisdiction of a jury trial, but not the former. For this reason, the public prosecutor’s office partially supported the appeal, considering that the charging of both offences made it incompatible to continue the proceedings through the jury trial route and required the case to be redirected to a summary procedure.

The provincial court has ultimately partially upheld the appeal filed by García Urbano’s defence, annulling “the contested order” and issuing an “order adapting the preliminary proceedings to the procedures of the summary trial process”.

Following this ruling, the court in Estepona that has been handling the case agreed on 8 May to grant a ten-day period to the public prosecutor’s office and the private prosecutions to request the opening of oral proceedings, under the abbreviated procedure. They will also have to resubmit their indictment or dismissal submissions in order to adapt them to the new procedural route. In its previous submission, the public prosecutor had requested a sentence of five years and six months’ imprisonment for García Urbano for offences of prevarication and embezzlement. This is in relation to the 2023 hiring of a woman as an adviser despite knowing that she would never carry out “any work activity whatsoever”, for which she received 5,276 euros in two salary payments:1,634 euros and another of 3,642 euros.

For the mayor’s defence, the court’s decision, which has not addressed the substance of the case as it concerns a procedural matter, opens the door to once again requesting that the case be dismissed, a step that he has already announced he will take. They claimed that "there is no evidence of any criminal offence" against the mayor and that this case investigating the hiring of this person as a position of trust for 46 days "stems from a false statement" that has already been revealed in other proceedings. Thus, García Urbano’s legal defence refers to the definitive dismissal of the case in which a Local Police officer’s complaint against the mayor for alleged sexual harassment between 2022 and 2023 was being investigated. It was in these proceedings, dismissed by the high court, where the officer’s partner stated that she had been employed as trusted staff by the council, which led to the emergence of this case.

García Urbano's defence said that in the transformation order of 4 December, the Estepona court relies on this "false" statement, adding that when the woman went from being summoned as a witness to giving evidence as an investigated person, she invoked her right not to testify and did not ratify her statements. "This is, as has already been demonstrated, an inadmissible and unjust political and media campaign, with the sole objective, as has been ratified by the courts, of damaging the dignity and political career of the mayor, trying to remove him from the town hall and his commitment to Estepona," the mayor's legal defence claimed.