The judge files a case for prevarication against the former socialist mayor of Granada Francisco Cuenca

Seven years after his indictment and more than a decade after the alleged crimes occurred, a judge in Seville this week filed a pending case against the last socialist mayor of Granada, Francisco Cuenca. The politician, now in opposition, was accused of various crimes allegedly committed during his period as provincial delegate of Economy and Innovation of the Junta de Andalucía, specifically related to the hiring of individuals to carry out control and inspection tasks of the Occupational Training Courses in Social Economy organized by the Junta during 2010, 2011 and 2012, tasks attributed by law to civil servants. The court now decrees the free dismissal of Cuenca, who faced possible crimes of prevarication, falsification of documents or fraud in administrative contracting.

The closure of the case also affects nine others of the 19 originally investigated in the case. The judge files the case for 10 of them to then agree to the opening of oral proceedings against the remaining nine defendants, who are charged with alleged crimes of administrative prevarication, fraud in contracting, falsification of documents, and negotiations and activities prohibited to public officials. These are also requested to pay bail ranging between 3,700 and 8,200 euros to ensure the responsibilities that could be imposed in the sentence after the oral trial. The facts investigated occurred when the Junta de Andalucía was governed by the PSOE and the complaint came from the Andalusian Union of Civil Servants.

Now, when the case is already past for Cuenca, who serves as municipal spokesman for his party and head of the opposition in the Granada City Council, his party has asked the PP to apologize and recalled the coincidence of the dates of imputation and file with politically relevant moments. Ana Muñoz Arquelladas, president of the Provincial Executive Committee of the PSOE, commented: "Now it is time to ask for forgiveness, especially to those who from the PP launched a political persecution without respecting the presumption of innocence. The PP reproved him twice in the plenary session of the city council and very thick and miserable words were heard. Francisco Cuenca was charged three months after being charged as mayor and his case has been archived three months after ceasing to be mayor. Coincidences do not exist. Draw your own conclusions."

In the archiving order, the judge of reinforcement of the Court of Instruction 6 of Seville indicates that they were left in the hands of private contracting matters that could only be executed by officials but, in view of the fact that the Public Prosecutor's Office does not request the imputation of Cuenca and the other nine people, it is not appropriate to impute them. "The corresponding responsible – investigated in the present case – of the Junta de Andalucía, through contracting services to be provided by individuals, would have used different contractors, natural and legal persons, to carry out those tasks despite the fact that the execution of the same would be part of the powers that are reserved by the legal system to public officials. "

Thus, according to the judge, it proceeded "unfairly and arbitrarily to attribute to those private contractors the possession of public functions, that is, functions that the Law attributes – exclusively and exclusively – to members of the Public Function." And it adds that "the illegitimate attribution of public functions would have been accompanied by the delivery of administrative documentation consisting of models of minutes and reports, subsequently used by each contractor in the exercise of the functions entrusted and powers attributed."

In relation to the former mayor of Granada, the judge does not now enter into assessing his performance. They were previous proceedings that specified that, in his capacity as provincial delegate of the Ministry of Economy and Innovation of the Board, "would have carried out the illegal contracting of the services of monitoring, control and verification of the execution of the Vocational Training Courses for the Social Economy in the province of Granada during the years 2010 and 2011 ", "So it is not appropriate to decree the opening of oral proceedings in front of them."

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