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M. A. / H. B. / SUR
Marbella
Friday, 27 September 2024, 11:49
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Another chapter closed this week on the corrupt past of Marbella council with the death of Julián Muñoz, town mayor from 2002 to 2003.
Muñoz, who died at the age of 76 after a long health battle which included several heart attacks, a stroke and cancer, had the distinction of being the person with the most confirmed sentences against them in Spanish legal history - 54 in total.
Muñoz, who died at the HC Hospital in Marbella, also suffered from diabetes which had left him without sight in one eye. His wife, Mayte Zaldívar - who he remarried in later life after a very public 2007 divorce - as well as the rest of his family and closest friends gathered at the hospital for his last moments.
Julián Muñoz became mayor of Marbella after his then friend and mentor, the infamous mayor Jesús Gil, was banned from public office. Muñoz would carry on the work of the GIL party that secured an overall majority of councillors in the town again in 2003 with him in charge before breaking with Gil and the party and seeing a speedy vote of no confidence two months later.
But all was not well in the local authority. The GIL party years of Gil and Muñoz and the reign of his successor - Marisol Yagüe - would explode a few years later with one of the biggest cases of corruption that Spain has ever seen - Operación Malaya. In fact the police and court operation was a highly complex macro corruption trial which hit many elements of Spain's institutions; some related parts of it rumble on to this day. Jesús Gil would die in 2004 before the malpractice started to make national headlines.
Beginning to unravel, Malaya centred on the real estate boom of the 1990s and early 2000s and the signing of illegal building licences, commissions, bribery and misuse of public funds on an industrial scale.
Muñoz's wife at the time famously told the court that her then-husband was prone to bringing bin bags home stuffed with cash.
Muñoz was arrested in 2006 over Malaya but only served part of his long prison sentences due to ill health.
He was also directly blamed for bankrupting Marbella council, although he claimed bankruptcy himself when asked to pay it back. Marbella town hall was taken over by central government as a result in 2006 for just over a year.
Apart from Jesús Gil, another name forever linked to Julían Muñoz is the popular Spanish singer Isabel Pantoja. Muñoz and Pantoja began a relationship in his time at the top in Marbella which lasted until 2009. All details of their romance, once revealed, and Muñoz's subsequent divorce from Mayte Zaldívar, were played out on the sensationalist television shows and in the gossip columns of Spanish papers. Pantoja was dragged into the case for money laundering and spent two years in jail for her part.
In an interview shown on Wednesday this week, recorded to be broadcast after his death, Muñoz, still defiant, told TV channel Telecinco that Pantoja, "ended up with the money, with all my money, I had nothing when I left jail". He also asked for forgiveness from the people of Marbella.
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