A deputy mayor of the PP of Alicante, on trial for the alleged rigging of works awards paid for with Zapatero's Plan E

The former vice mayor of Alicante Andrés Llorens (PP), who was a councilor for four terms under the command of Luis Díaz Alperi and Sonia Castedo, faces the request of four years in prison for the alleged fixation in 2009 and 2010 of the award of different works distributed throughout the city and paid for by the State Investment Plan, the so-called Plan E, promoted by the then Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Llorens shares a bench and request for penalties with the former head of Urban Attention of the Alicante City Council and two representatives of the companies allegedly benefited, Becsa and CCMS.

The trial began in the tenth section of the Alicante Provincial Court this Tuesday, a day late, since one of the magistrates who make up the court was indisposed with symptoms compatible with the covid. Llorens, the main defendant, appears because, according to the indictment issued in 2018, there are indications that the then mayor knew and consented to the irregularities detected in the adjudications, which is why he is considered the author of the alleged crimes of prevarication and fraud.

It all started with an anonymous email sent to the socialist representatives of the Alicante Provincial Council, in which the alleged tampering was detailed. The tip was transferred to the then socialist mayor Carmen Sánchez Brufal, who began to investigate the matter, reported it to Anticorruption and tomorrow will testify at the Hearing as a witness, since it acts as a private prosecution. Both Sánchez Brufal, who, consulted by this newspaper, has declined to make statements, and the Prosecutor's Office are asking for four years in prison for the defendants.

In 2011, the National Police joined the investigation and, by court order, arrested the three people who occupy the bench with Llorens. The initial suspicions ended up leading to a set of tenders that were around five million euros and that included works such as the renovation of several squares in the city, the construction or adaptation of more than a hundred underground garbage containers and even the conditioning of two of the most emblematic and tourist symbols of Alicante: the Canalejas park and the pavement of the Explanada de España.

The investigating judge came to consider in her order that even the specifications had been drawn up in the offices of one of the benefited companies, Becsa, which was located as the successful bidder and left the other, CCMS, as a subcontractor. Those sheets reached the municipal offices of the Department of Urban Care, where supposedly the technician tried as his own signed them with the approval, says the judge, from Llorens.

The former vice mayor, who came to command the local council after the resignation of the mayor Sonia Castedo for having been accused in one of the branches of the Brugal corruption scheme, of which he has recently been acquitted, came to politics after presiding over the commission Manager of the main Alicante festivals, the Bonfires of San Juan. After going through several councils, he is currently retired from politics. However, the Prosecutor's Office asks for him and for the technician under his command eleven years of disqualification from the performance of employment or public office. For employers, disqualification for six years to contract with the public sector or receive aid, subsidies, tax incentives or Social Security benefits. What's more,The Public Prosecutor's Office underlined in its indictment that the city council was harmed "as the equality of the hiring was flawed," for which it asks the accused for a joint compensation of 1,209,700 euros.

This is not the first time that Llorens sits on the bench, since he was acquitted in the trial of an alleged irregular award of works in the Plaza de Magallanes, a case that was dismissed.

Nor will it be the last, because there is still another open case pending for the alleged irregular contracting in the award of the assembly of festive and cultural facilities in 2003 to the concessionaire Isjoma, which in Alicante is known as the