The vote-buying plot in Melilla rigged public contracts to “corrupt” two elections

The head of the Court of Instruction 2 of Melilla, María del Carmen Perles, who is investigating the alleged plot to buy votes for the elections on May 28 in the autonomous city, ordered this Tuesday the arrest of Mustafa Aberchán, leader of the Coalition for Melilla (CpM), and six other prominent leaders of his party, including his number one for 28-M and former Minister of the Treasury, Dunia Almansouri, as alleged members of a “criminal organization” that in a “planned” manner diverted funds to through the rigging of public contracts to “corrupt” the results of the 2019 and 2023 regional elections, according to sources familiar with the cause told EL PAÍS.

The judge concludes that, with this, the political party intended to “reach the Government” – it achieved this in the previous legislature, when it joined the tripartite party headed by the Ciudadanos candidate and in which the PSOE was also present – ​​and “maintain itself” in the same after 28-M through the purchase of votes in both elections.

The judge emphasizes that there was “a distribution of functions among the people involved” in what she calls a “criminal network.”

In addition, from Aberchán and Almansouri, the other detainees are Rachid Bussian Mohamed, former Minister of Infrastructure, Urban Planning and Sports;

Hassan Mohatar, former Minister of Environment and Sustainability;

Mohamed Ahmed Al-Lal, former Minister of Districts, Youth and Citizen Participation, who was already arrested in May in the first phase of the operation;

Fátima Mohamed Kaddur, former deputy minister of Mayor and Neighborhood Relations, and Yonaida Sel-lam, president of the Melilla Municipal Housing and Land Company (Emvismesa).

On Tuesday night, the magistrate agreed to the provisional arrest of four of those investigated - one of them, who could be evaded with the payment of a bail of 5,000 euros - and released a fifth with precautionary measures.

This Wednesday he is scheduled to take a statement from the two who were arrested outside Melilla, including Aberchán.

The investigation has revealed that the ministries that were in the hands of CpM diverted the money through the allegedly irregular awarding of minor contracts, as well as various subsidies, with the ultimate objective of financing the plot and benefiting its alleged ringleaders.

The investigations point to the alleged rigging of awards worth six million euros.

Aberchán, who went to a Santander police station when he learned that he was wanted by the Police and will testify before the judge this Wednesday, was already sentenced by the Supreme Court to two years in prison and two and a half years of disqualification for leading another purchase plot. of votes by mail in the 2008 Senate elections. This penalty, which prevented him from running in the March 28 elections, was extinguished last August.

Aberchán was president of the autonomous city of Melilla for a brief period between 1999 and 2000.

The one baptized as Operation Santiago-Rusadir had had a first phase on May 23 of last year, just five days before the regional elections.

Then, the National Police arrested a dozen people, including Mohamed Ahmed Al Lal, alias

Himmi

, at that time acting advisor for Districts, Youth and Citizen Participation of that Government and number three on the CpM electoral list for the 28th. -M.

Abdelilah N., Aberchán's son-in-law, and his brother were also arrested.

All of them were accused of electoral crime and belonging to a criminal group after an alleged vote-buying plot was detected whose members toured the humble neighborhoods of the autonomous city in search of people willing to sell their vote in exchange for amounts that ranged between 100 and 150 euros.

In that operation, 10 searches were carried out, in which money and ballots were found, including some supposedly stolen from postmen in the previous weeks.

Among the homes and premises that the police entered was the one that CpM used as a “data center” and that also served as the headquarters of the party's campaign team.

The leader of the Coalition for Melilla, Mustafa Aberchán, at a press conference on May 25, 2023. Antonio Ruiz

Sources close to the investigation highlight that that first phase of the operation prevented electoral fraud from being carried out that allegedly would have allowed CpM to improve the results of 2019, when it obtained 10,472 votes and became the second most voted force after the PP, which that allowed him to enter the Government.

Of the 11,727 vote-by-mail requests processed in the autonomous city for March 28, only 5,814 ballots were finally sent.

The nearly 6,000 remaining votes were not cast after the Zonal Electoral Board (JEZ) of Melilla and the Central Electoral Board (JEC) decided to require every Melilla resident to go to a Post Office to deliver their ballot in person and with the DNI after detecting signs of massive purchase of votes.

In those elections, CpM dropped to 5,557 votes and won five of the 25 councilors, three less than in the 2019 elections. It went to the opposition and lost the councils.

After those first arrests, the focus of the investigation was placed on the public contracts of the ministries that during the period 2019-2023 were in the hands of CpM.

Specifically, the Treasury, Employment and Commerce portfolios;

that of Infrastructure, Urban Planning and Sports;

that of Districts, Youth and Citizen Participation, and that of Environment and Sustainability.

The suspicion falls on those awards that were divided into smaller contracts to avoid the call for public tenders and, in this way, have a free hand to award them, avoiding their oversight.

In fact, days later, the magistrate demanded from the Melilla Executive the files of public contracts awarded to at least six companies, all of them small local construction companies, some with only one employee.

Some of them had received awards from the departments controlled by the Aberchán party to carry out small works that, in many cases, did not exceed 10,000 euros: from fixing benches installed in the street to raising small walls in certain areas.

Along with these companies, the judge then ordered the Melilla Government to suspend any payment that was planned to be made to these companies by the executive itself, municipal companies or public companies dependent on it.

It was also ordered to avoid transferring public funds to 15 people, of which at least five were related to these companies, according to sources close to the investigation.

The analysis of this documentation has revealed that a part of the funds allegedly received by the plot for these irregular awards was used to purchase votes, although sources close to the investigation detail that in reality this amount was “small.”

The investigation is trying to clarify what the rest was used for, although everything indicates that another part was used to pay individuals who acted as thugs to third parties whom members of the plot wanted to intimidate for different reasons.

The investigations also look for indications of whether there was personal enrichment on the part of any of the main people involved.

The case investigates crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, fraud in public procurement, prevarication and embezzlement of public funds, as reported by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia.

In May of last year, when those first arrests occurred, the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, in the decree by which he entrusted the investigations to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, already pointed in that direction.

García Ortiz indicated in that document that those then arrested allegedly “would form an organized structure, with prior and concerted planning” of “individuals related” or “related” to the Coalition for Melilla party and that “the purchase of votes would also be financed with part of the funds obtained by companies and individuals related to the indicated political party in public tenders, agreements, contracts and subsidies that would have been awarded during the last legislature in the autonomous city.”

The origin of the operation that uncovered the plot was a coincidental event: the alleged match-fixing of a modest soccer team in the city that was being investigated by the National Police.

During those investigations into fraud in sports betting that had as its epicenter the CD Huracán Melilla, a team of the Tercera RFEF (the fifth tier of Spanish football), the agents intercepted with a court order a telephone conversation of the former president of this team, Felipe Heredia Núñez, in which he supposedly boasted of having obtained more than 500 votes for CpM.

In April of last year, this club supposedly received a subsidy to finance its trips to the Peninsula to play official matches when, paradoxically, the season was practically over.

Heredia was one of those arrested in May for electoral fraud.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I am already a subscriber

_