From helping the investigation of the 'Punica case' to boycotting it

Agents of the Civil Guard, during the search of the Valdemoro City Council carried out in October 2014 as part of the Punic Operation. Kike Para

From helping justice in the Punic case to being charged with seven crimes for allegedly boycotting it.

The judge of the National High Court Manuel García-Castellón has summoned two officials from the Valdemoro City Council to testify as under investigation, whom the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office accuses of hiding key documentation on the alleged urban fixes in this town in the south of Madrid committed by the plot presumably headed by former PP counselor Francisco Granados.

In a letter, Anticorruption highlights that one of them, Montserrat PG, head of the town planning services of the Consistory, "became an interlocutor on behalf of the Valdemoro City Council with the police team of the case, in order to be the one who provide the documentation.

The suspicion is that, in fact,

what she has done is "deprive the cause of part of the information that incriminated her and her partner."

This official had declared at the beginning of the investigation as a witness and had denounced before the judge who was investigating the case at the time, Eloy Velasco, alleged pressure from the main people involved in the plot.

The Prosecutor's Office highlights that this attitude of both "has prevented progress in clarifying the facts", so now it has asked the judge, in addition to questioning them as defendants, to extend the investigation for another three months, which should have ended last January 29.

One of them is expected to testify on Tuesday.

Anticorruption accuses both of the crimes of prevarication, embezzlement of public funds, fraud against the public administration, false documents, bribery, money laundering and belonging to a criminal organization.

The indictment comes more than seven years after the first arrests in the case.

The imputation of the two officials occurs in piece number 4 of the macro-summary of the Púnica

, in which the activities of the plot in Valdemoro are investigated from 1999, when Francisco Granados took over the mayor's office "willing to get rich", Anti-corruption highlights in the writing.

Since then, and even when he had already left his post to occupy a regional government department led by Esperanza Aguirre, the politician allegedly "had abused the power he had" to promote various urban actions "as a mechanism for personal enrichment, leaving aside the general interest”.

Among them, the sale of public plots below their real value, reclassification of rural land acquired by others involved and the manipulation of the general planning of the municipality.

All this, in exchange for "huge commissions [...] to the severe detriment of the public coffers of the City Council".

In these alleged fixes, Anticorruption considers that Granados allegedly had the support of both his right-hand man in the Consistory, the PP councilor José Luis Moreno Torres - who would later replace him as mayor - and the builders Ramiro Cid and David Marjaliza, all they accused, as well as "with the support and advice of municipal technicians."

Two of them, the municipal architect and the hiring manager have already been charged.

Now, the Prosecutor's Office extends the suspicions to two others, Montserrat P. and her partner María RF, an urban planning technician.

According to the report that has led to the imputation of both, "the City Council has been systematically neglecting the requirements" of documentation on different urban operations that were being carried out by both the magistrate, the Civil Guard, the judicial experts and the Prosecutor herself during the investigation. .

"The allegedly illegal agreements signed by the City Council with companies in the plot have been delivered incomplete and lacking technical reports," the Public Ministry highlights in its letter.

Despite these shortcomings in the documentation, the investigators finally located technical reports of one of the suspected urban operations that "have allowed deepening the knowledge of the facts and revealed that [the two officials] would also have played a nuclear role in the events. indicatively criminal”.

Specifically, the Anti-Corruption report emphasizes that both had a "proactive intervention" and that they even advised the plot, in addition to issuing favorable, allegedly mendacious reports "so that the plot could carry out the schemes designed, to the detriment of the coffers." of the Consistory”.

Among these irregularities, the Prosecutor's Office highlights seven committed between 2007 and 2011 that allowed the builders involved, among other irregularities,

Despite the time that has elapsed since the beginning of the investigations ―they were initiated by the Civil Guard in February 2014 and the first arrests were made in October of that year―, Anticorruption considers that at least two of the alleged crimes committed by both officials, the prevarication and embezzlement of public funds, would not have prescribed until 2026, since they were committed continuously between 2000 and 2011.

Thefts, losses and misplacements

It is not the first time that the investigation of

is hampered by the disappearance or destruction of documentation.

In November 2014, a few days after the arrests took place, the Civil Guard discovered the then mayor of Serranillos del Valle (Madrid), Antonio Sánchez Fernández, while he was taking boxes of documentation from his office.

Months later, in April 2015, an official of the Valdemoro City Council, a close collaborator of Granados, was accused of a crime against the Administration of Justice for allegedly ordering several workers of the council, including one with a mental disability, to destroy in a paper shredder lot of writings.

In March 2016, the then mayor of Moraleja de Enmedio, another of the municipalities affected by the plot,

He denounced three suspicious episodes of destruction and disappearance of information that affected his predecessor in office, accused in the charge.

In July 2017, the public company Arpegio, Nuevo Arpegio, in charge of land management for the Community of Madrid, informed the National Court that it had “misplaced” some contracts that the judge in the Púnica case had claimed.