The former president of Murcia, Pedro Antonio Sánchez, sits on the bench this Tuesday in a trial that will try to clarify the construction process of a municipal auditorium in Puerto Lumbreras in 2005, when Sánchez was mayor of that town.
Sánchez will be prosecuted for the alleged crimes of continued prevarication, subsidy fraud and fraud.
The prosecutor asks for him a sentence of four years and six months in prison and 19 years of disqualification from holding public office.
The case, for which he had to leave the regional presidency in 2017, will be tried at the Murcia Provincial Court starting at 10:00 this Tuesday.
It is expected to last until the end of November and that about 40 witnesses and a dozen experts will intervene.
The investigations began in 2015, ten years after the municipal auditorium that gives the case its name was built.
In April 2017, the PP politician was forced to resign as president of the autonomous community when he was involved in this and other legal cases.
During the investigation phase, in March 2017, Sánchez discharged all responsibility for processing the project on the municipal technicians.
In a detailed indictment, the prosecutor recounts how Sánchez “illicitly” commissioned the architect Martín Lejárraga to draw up a project for the construction of a theater-auditorium, without calling any competition.
He did it, says the letter, because he knew that the autonomous community was going to grant subsidies to pay for this type of infrastructure.
The architect, who is also charged in this process, accepted the commission knowing that no contracting process had been carried out, and between 2006 and 2007 he prepared a preliminary project, a basic project and a general definition project for the auditorium, all on a plot that "was not even municipal property."
With all the projects already drafted and to give a sense of legality to the process, a public tender was then called which,
The City Council of Puerto Lumbreras obtained a grant of 6 million euros to start up the auditorium, but later both its location and the construction itself were modified, to which three annex buildings and a garage were added, all without notifying it. to the autonomous community in order not to lose the subsidy.
According to the prosecutor, these changes determined "the technical and economic infeasibility of the project from its inception" and led to its execution "surreptitiously" to the point that "an incomplete work" was certified as finished.
In addition, he points out that, in order to justify the subsidy, "work certifications unduly increased by 38.04% knowingly" were provided to the autonomous community.
The prosecutor considers that Sánchez committed continued prevarication by hiring the architect illegally and without prior competition and also by calling the competition a posteriori, crimes for which he is requesting a 10-year sentence of special disqualification from employment or public office.
He also points out a crime of subsidy fraud for having provided data that was not true to collect regional aid, for which he considers that Sánchez should spend two years in prison and pay a fine of six million euros, the same money he received from public coffers.
The public ministry sees a third crime of fraud and prevarication by having modified the initial project and its location without notifying the regional administration, for which it would add another two years and six months in prison and another nine years and disqualification.
Together with the former regional president, the architect Lejárraga will sit on the bench, for whom he asks for nine years of disqualification for the crime of continued prevarication, and two years and three months in prison and eight and a half years of disqualification for the crime of fraud and prevarication.
Those same two crimes are considered by the prosecutor who was also committed by the municipal secretary of Puerto Lumbreras in those years, Caridad García Vidal, for whom she requests the same penalties.
Finally, the prosecutor asks for two years and three months in prison and eight years and one month of disqualification for Vicente Gimeno, the person in charge of the company that carried out the works, ECISA, for the crime of fraud and prevarication.
Archived court records
It is not the first time that Sánchez has sat on the bench of the accused: he already did so in 2018 in the
Pasarelas case
, also related to his management as mayor of Puerto Lumbreras.
The case, for which he was accused of prevarication, falsehood and fraud, was filed in 2019 due to an error in the procedure.
The decision was ratified in June 2021 by the Supreme Court despite the fact that the Prosecutor's Office had requested that the trial be repeated.
Sánchez was also investigated in the
Púnica case
for an alleged diversion of public funds when he was Minister of Education, in 2014. The case was filed in 2019 by the National Court due to lack of evidence, so the current case is the only one that the former president He continues to have justice pending.