Seville, (EFE).- The former director of the Andalusian Training and Employment Fund (Faffe), Fernando Villén, has acknowledged this Monday that he made payments in brothels with bank cards from this institution. But that all the money “for improper use” that he withdrew “he returned them in all cases”, something that is not shared by the Prosecutor’s Office or the prosecution.
Villén has testified in the trial that began today in the Provincial Court of Seville with a popular jury -five women and four men-. In which he is accused, together with the former economic and financial director of the Faffe, Ana Valls, who plans to testify tomorrow.
The trial began one day after the municipal elections, once on March 30 the Court agreed to postpone it so as not to interfere in the elections. Since it was initially scheduled between May 18 and 26, and will last until the next 12 trial.
Presided over by Judge Mercedes Alaya, Villén y Valls is being tried for a continued crime of embezzlement of public funds in competition with a continued crime of falsifying an official document committed by a public official. Although the accusation represented by the Junta de Andalucía does not ask for the second crime of embezzlement.
More than 30,000 euros in hostess clubs
The Prosecutor Fernando Soto has tried to demonstrate during the interrogation of Villén that the payments made by the former director of the Faffe with the cards were not repaid, and that this is a case “simply of corruption.” Since 32,566 euros were spent on at least ten visits to hostess clubs, mainly in Seville and Cádiz.
Soto has reiterated that Villén used public money in “prostitutes, orgies and festivals” in nightclubs and “in mutual agreement” with Valls promoted a system “to hide” these expenses charged to the Faffe. So he believes that they devised a system to invent invoices and advances to “compensate” the money used.
In the interrogation, the Prosecutor has placed special emphasis on the more than 14,000 euros spent at the Don Ángelo club, in the Seville capital, with the Faffe card. Something that Villén himself has recognized but that, as he has explained, is returned two days later in cash, in an envelope delivered to the owner of the establishment by his driver.
Villén has confessed that the money is lent to him by a friend, to whom he later returned the debt. And that he was surprised that the card accepted such an amount of money since it was supposedly limited to 3,000 euros. Something that he shared with Valls, whom he asked not to appear in the Faffe accounts because he was going to return it.
unaccounted for checks
The Prosecutor’s Office denounces that as a result of this case, Valls signed two checks for 6,300 euros that he collected in cash from the Faffe. And of which “nothing has been heard from again.” So that in the bank records “the money from the returns” that Villén assures that they occurred does not appear.
The former director of the Faffe has been quite whole throughout the interrogation but finally collapsed during questions from his lawyer, Adolfo Cuéllar, when he assured that he was aware of the “degree of regret” he had. Since this case has given him a “great deterioration” both in his personal and social relationships. And even a depression.
Previously, his defense attorney had recognized that these facts responded to “morally reprehensible acts.” But he has warned that a “moral” issue was not being elucidated in this trial. But a legal issue that has resulted in the fact that his defendant had returned “on all occasions” what was spent with cards.
Expenses in other establishments
The investigating judge of the case detected “eight different operations of expenses made through the cards associated with the Faffe accounts in different establishments where prostitution would have been exercised.” And in addition to the hostess clubs, he would have made expenses in other establishments.
Specifically, in El Corte Inglés, 113.90 euros; discos, 136.10 euros; service station, 216.39 euros; hotels, 2,521 euros. Tolls, 11,200.24 euros; restaurants, 21,005.76 euros; vehicle workshop, 173.79 euros, among others, according to the Civil Guard report. EFE