"Money in b", espionage and dangerous driving: electoral tension explodes in Ourense

The battle of the municipal has started strongly in Ourense. The attempts of the baron of the PP, Manuel Baltar, to avoid that the outcome of the criminal investigation in which he is immersed will burden him with the start of the campaign are being unsuccessful at the moment. The aspirant to repeat as president of the Diputación will have to appear before the judge of Puebla de Sanabria (Zamora) a few hours before the pasting of posters to respond for an alleged crime against road safety. After trying to delay the hearing with a request for postponement and with the non-appearance of his lawyer, the magistrate has summoned him on Thursday for the fast trial, in person or electronically. Baltar has also unsuccessfully requested the "nullity of the proceedings" of a case that was opened for facts that the defendant himself has recognized: driving at 215 kilometers per hour an official car on Sunday, April 23.

Minutes after transcending this Wednesday the new judicial summons to the baron of the PP, the mayor of Ourense, the independent Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, stood in front of the main microphone of the plenary hall. The councilman, to whom Baltar gave with his support the baton of command in 2019 despite the fact that he had been third, spent more than an hour to discredit the audios that have agitated the prolegomena of the campaign in his city. Published by the local newspaper La Región, they hear the voice of Jácome talking about "money in b", get-goers and alleged fundraising operations with municipal concessionaires. The leader of the independent party Ourensana Democracy has refused to explain its content because, he says, the recordings are "illegal", obtained with a hidden microphone in the Mayor's Office, and "are manipulated". He maintains that he never said or did what is heard or intuited there.

Jácome said on Tuesday in a statement that he had denounced the alleged espionage in the guard court, but sources from the Superior Court of Xustiza de Galicia report that in that court there is no complaint in his name. The opposition has taken the recordings to court so that the councilman can be investigated. "You can't prove anything," Jácome replies. "A judge will not validate them because there is no original audio." According to him, the authors of the "espionage" have edited, cut and "decontextualized" the "60,000 minutes" of recording that he calculates that they will have, reducing them to 20 minutes of "fake" audios. And he has taken advantage of the press conference to make a live demonstration of what he thinks was done with his voice: he recorded himself saying that he does not steal and edited the audio by removing the no.

Behind this alleged espionage that he compared to Watergate, Jácome assures that a "mafia" of companies "junkies of public money" that play "millions" in the elections is hidden. He maintains that he is being victimized by "the tactic of the devil: mixing lies with truths." "And possibly all this is orchestrated by the PP or the PSOE, perhaps more by the PP. It is a suspicion," he said about some parties that, he said, left "200 plugged in" in the municipal staff. And having such suspicions, will he repeat the pact with Baltar that four years ago allowed the PP baron to continue at the head of the Diputación? "The devil is very bad, but I will make a pact with the devil if with it I get heaven for Ourense," he replied.

Jácome charged directly against the newspaper that published the audios that according to him are manipulated, La Región. And he linked it with the complaint that he put in court and that annulled the contract of the Diputación de Baltar by which the provincial institution paid 2.7 million euros to this local newspaper for the purchase of its archive (the matter is pending appeal in the Supreme). The mayor also gave the name of Copasa, a construction company from Ourense that is among the firms that receive the most public works in Galicia, underlining his interest in the municipal concessions that will have to be renewed by the local government that comes out of the polls on 28-M. He insinuated that the company is behind the espionage, but admitted that he says it without evidence.

Jácome, at a moment of the press conference. OSCAR CORRAL

Jácome argued, in self-defense, that he is not in office "to cut pasta" of the companies that aspire to these awards as the audios imply, because it was he who postponed them until after the elections. "What prevents La Región and Copasa from taking over the public money of Ourense is Gonzalo Pérez Jácome and they want to take me out of there," he insisted. However, the mayor says he does not feel "any concern" about the electoral cost of the audios: "After this unfair attack, the people are going to take our side and we are going to sweep the elections."

Pérez Jácome's mandate has been convulsive. He broke the government agreement with the PP, three of his seven councilors abandoned him and he has dragged a string of judicial problems from which he has emerged unscathed. The penultimate case was closed in June 2022. The mayor of Ourense was investigated for embezzlement of public funds, for diverting almost 100,000 euros from his political group to the television channel he owns, Auria TV. He was later acquitted of minor ill-treatment for pushing a trade unionist. The recordings that have erupted in the electoral battle are already in the hands of justice. PSOE and BNG have taken them to the Prosecutor's Office, a step before the public ministry that the PP also announced.

The candidates of PP, PSOE and Ourensana Democracy in these elections have already been mayors of Ourense and also have in common that the three have been accused of corruption but then acquitted. The candidate of the PP, Manuel Cabezas, who held the baton of command between 1995 and 2007, was tried for prevarication for forgiving assignments of land to real estate developers. And that of the PSdeG-PSOE, Francisco Rodríguez, who held the position since 2007, resigned in 2012 after being arrested within Operation Pokémon. That judicial macro-summary, which cost them the position and the political career of several councilors and councilors of PP, PSOE and BNG who were finally released from charges, was based largely on police punctures. Those recordings pointed to the commission of alleged crimes that, however, could not be proven.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Read more

I'm already a subscriber