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Judicial blow to Almeida and the PP for acting "in bad faith" and "recklessness" against two councilors from Carmena

2023-02-08T12:20:25.655Z


The Provincial Court of Madrid confirms the acquittal of the exediles of Ahora Madrid Carlos Sánchez Mato and Celia Mayer and condemns the popular ones to pay costs for the 'Open Tennis case'


On June 21, 2017, the investigating court number 21 of Madrid admitted for processing a complaint filed by the Municipal Group of the Popular Party against two councilors of the City Council of the capital, then governed by Manuela Carmena (now Madrid).

The PP, headed those days by the opposition leader José Luis Martínez-Almeida, launched a media and judicial campaign against two councilors: Celia Mayer and Carlos Sánchez Mato.

The Madrid Tennis Open

case had just been born

.

Six years later, with Almeida already as mayor of Madrid, justice has acquitted the two councilors in a final sentence advanced by

eldiario.es

this Wednesday and to which EL PAÍS has also had access.

Almeida called the two councilors "criminals" during these years.

Now, the court not only exempts them from criminal responsibility, but also condemns the prosecution, which was exercised by the Popular Municipal Group in the City Hall, to pay the costs for acting "recklessly" and "bad faith"—according to the auto― by maintaining the accusation against Mayer "without any accusatory specificity" and knowing that, when the events occurred, she was on maternity leave.

The sentence, which can be appealed, also supposes an amendment to a way of doing politics, since it was Almeida himself who signed the complaint at that time.

The final sentence, dated January 13, 2023, states: "The sentence handed down on 05/06/2022 in the present case is declared final and enforceable in which Ana Varela, Carlos Sánchez Mato and Celia Mayer are acquitted of the crime that had been accused."

"During all this time they have acted like criminals," says the exedil Sánchez Mato, who now works as an adviser to the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, by phone.

“I would have loved it if they had reached the Supreme Court, so there would be more costs.

Despite the fact that we are acquitted, they have achieved their objective, which was to annul us politically.

Surely, in my neighborhood of Aluche they still think that I have been doomed.

It is a form of opposition that is very profitable for them.

I don't want to patrimonialize, but they were after me.

I did a lot of damage to them in the City Hall.

We set up commissions to investigate the M-30, social housing.

They had a thing for me.

Íñigo Henríquez de Luna, who is now in the Assembly as a Vox deputy but before as a PP councilor in the City Council, even yelled at me in the corridors of Cibeles:

Six years of judicial labyrinths

It was the PP and the Transparency and Justice association, linked to former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, who sued the three in 2017 for commissioning two law firms “by hand” and “without publicity” to investigate possible irregularities in the Open de Tennis during the stage of Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón.

"It has not been proven that the defendants, in the exercise of their powers and responsibilities, had any other intention than to protect and safeguard the interests and municipal coffers," says the seventh section of the Hearing.

In the trial, the Madrid Prosecutor's Office also saw no evidence of crime and requested an acquittal.

The resolution explains the beginning of the case, when Varela, CEO of Madrid Destino, began to suspect the legality of the commitments and obligations that this public company assumed in previous agreements signed for the organization and holding of the Mutua Madrid Open, agreements for which the Consistory had to face important financial outlays.

After consulting the experts of the City Council and legal advice, she requested various external legal reports, as did Sánchez Mato, as acting president of Madrid Destino and later as Delegate of Economy and Finance of the City Council.

Reports were commissioned from two law firms, for a value of 50,000 euros, on the contracts signed between the public company and the commercial company Madrid Trophy Promotion.

The payment of these reports with municipal money was denounced by the Popular Municipal Group, despite the fact that, according to the Chamber, "it was aware of the lack of consistency of the facts denounced from the prevaricating perspective" Above all, it continues, after issuing three reports by the outsourced legal services, "which are very eloquent of the, at least, striking legal and economic discrepancies derived from the conventions and agreements signed in previous years, and of the entity of the harmful consequences that they could have for the municipal coffers as stated in said legal reports”.

After assessing the questioned legal reports, the three defendants filed a complaint for administrative prevarication and embezzlement with the Prosecutor's Office on March 23, 2017.

"Six years later," says Sánchez Mato by phone, "nobody from the PP has contacted" him.

The objective, in his opinion, was already done: front pages, news and political disapproval in municipal plenary sessions.

“This generated a lot of tension with Manuela Carmena's environment.

We were not against the tennis Open.

We were against paying a lot for a tennis master's degree that in Rome costs zero euros of public money.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-02-08

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