San Sebastián (EFE).- The former mayoress of Lasarte-Oria, Ana Urchueguía, of the PSE-EE, assumes having committed “continuous crimes of prevarication and embezzlement of public funds due to irregularities in the municipal funds allocated” to cooperation projects in the Nicaraguan town of Somoto.
Crimes in the “Somoto case”
Urchuegía makes this acknowledgment in a compliance document signed “two weeks ago” that will prevent the holding of the oral trial, initially scheduled for last March and whose deadline for filing the indictments had expired, according to News from Gipuzkoa and has confirmed EFE.
The pact allows the former mayor to avoid going to prison, since the crime of embezzlement “has not been able to demonstrate that she has profited personally.”
Urchueguía is disqualified from holding any public office for 18 years and must pay the costs of the judicial process and a fine of 2,160 euros.
The Gipuzkoa Court must issue a judgment after the parties ratify the agreement in oral hearing.
Delegation of the Basque Government in Chile and Peru
The case was reopened by the Gipuzkoa Court in May 2021, after the appeal filed against the decision of the investigating judge to temporarily archive the so-called Somoto case, a city of about 35,000 inhabitants located to the north, due to lack of judicial collaboration. of Nicaragua, near the border with Honduras, and twinned with Lasarte-Oria.
The initial decision of the justice to archive the case provoked the reaction of the City Council, with the votes of EH Bildu, PNV and Elkarrekin Podemos, and the popular action, which presented appeals in February 2020 that have been resolved.
Urchueguía resigned from the Mayor’s Office in 2010 to take charge of the Basque Government delegation in Chile and Peru, at a time when a municipal commission was already investigating the possible existence of irregularities in the management of these subsidies.
The PSE-EE of Gipuzkoa has activated the procedure to suspend the former mayor of Lasarte-Oria from militancy after learning of the agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office for the “Somoto case”.
suspension of membership
Sources from the PSE-EE of Gipuzkoa have explained to EFE that the procedure for the precautionary suspension of militancy began after the agreement was known, which was signed two weeks ago.
The PSE-EE of Lasarte-Oria (Gipuzkoa) has highlighted, for its part, that in the so-called Somoto case “there has been no appropriation of public money”.
The PSE-EE makes this reflection in a statement after learning of the existence of a compliance document in which, lacking its ratification in the courts, Urchueguía admits the existence of “irregularities” in municipal funds allocated to cooperation projects in the Nicaraguan town of Somoto.
The PSE-EE of Lasarte-Oria wants to emphasize that the agreement expressly states that Ana Urchueguía did not appropriate amounts destined for subsidies. Neither did the diversions of public money generate serious damage or hindrance to the service to which they were consigned, since they were used in Somoto”, the Socialist Party now explains in its note.
After expressing its “maximum respect” for the agreement reached by the Prosecutor’s Office, the private prosecution and Urchueguía’s defense, the PSE-EE recalls that “at all times” it has been interested in “clarifying any possible doubts regarding the cooperation that between 2000 and 2008, the Lasarte-Oria City Council maintained relations with the people of Somoto in Nicaragua”.
“Do not hinder the procedure”
“For this reason, the socialist government, the City Council, hired an external audit in 2010 for its inspection,” he adds, while recalling that it also set up “an investigation commission where conclusions were approved that recognized that various administrative irregularities had occurred during said administration.” .
“During the four years in which the PSE-EE was in the opposition -he continues-, at all times it urged the municipal government of Bildu, PNV and Plataforma Ciudadana to file a lawsuit in this regard, something they did a few months after the municipal elections of 2015”.
A decision after which his position “until today” has been “not to hinder the ongoing judicial procedure so that at no time could there be any doubt” of the performance of the PSE-EE “in the entire process”.
“For this reason, after the agreement reached between all the parties, from the PSE-EE we end an old litigation from 2008 and we maintain our commitment to continue providing the Lasarte-Oria City Council with sufficient tools so that this type of irregularity do not occur again ”, concludes the statement