Madrid/León (EFE) them to the former president of the Provincial Council Marcos Martínez Barazón, while he has acquitted all of the crimes that entailed a prison sentence.
The second sentence in the Púnica case, which broke out more than 8 years ago, acquits the 8 accused of the continued crimes of fraud against the Administration, falsification of a commercial document in competition with embezzlement and bribery for which the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor and the popular accusation exercised by Adade.
Eight and a half year ban
The court has sentenced Martínez Barazón, current mayor of Cuadros, to 8 and a half years of disqualification for a crime of prevarication; the former general coordinator of the Provincial Council and mayor of Puebla de Lillo, Pedro Vicente Sánchez, and the former inspector of the Provincial Council, Manuel Jesús López Sánchez, to whom the mitigation of undue delays applies.
Both Martínez Barazón and Sánchez were re-elected mayors of their respective municipalities last Sunday.
The Court condemns computer scientist and consultant Alejandro de Pedro to four years and three months of disqualification, while it acquits José Antonio Alonso Conesa, partner of the former in the Madiva and EICO companies, as well as the worker of these Guadalupe Caballero companies, as well as both commercial companies.
personal reputation contracts
This branch of the Púnica case has revolved around the online personal reputation contracts agreed by the León Provincial Council for its former president Isabel Carrasco, who was assassinated in May 2014, and her successor Martínez Barazón, as well as other contracts.
In this procedure, the online personal reputation contracts agreed by the León Provincial Council for its former president Isabel Carrasco and her successor Martínez Barazón, as well as others awarded to the companies of the consultant Alejandro De Pedro, have been investigated.
irregularities
The Court considers it proven that De Pedro, in collusion with the defendant Martínez Barazón, president of the Provincial Council during the months of June, July, August and September 2014, carried out an irregular administrative procedure that was followed in said provincial institution for the adjudication of institutional advertising.
“With this procedure for approving invoices, all of them monthly, of similar amounts, and in all cases, less than 6,000 euros, processed urgently, without it being necessary, the law was clearly and patently infringed. regulations established in the Law of Public Sector Contracts”, highlights the sentence.
All this, he continues, “without having to resort to an adequate and pertinent contracting system, that is, to an open or negotiated contract, as a permanent contract that it was, with the legal requirements of bidding and offers that it entailed, thus also avoiding that other media could choose and access the institutional advertising of the Provincial Council and also evading a more rigorous and exhaustive control”.
On the contrary, the Chamber considers that it has not been proven that the online reputation services or SEO positioning carried out by the company EICO On Line had been carried out in favor and for the personal benefit of either Isabel Carrasco or her successor in the Presidency of the Provincial Council
For the Court, neither has it been proven that the invoices drawn by MADIVA did not correspond to work actually carried out, nor that institutional advertising services had not been provided, nor that under the concept that appeared in them (insertion of advertising banners Diputación de León) covertly carried out works of personal reputation or other political advice for the presidents of the institution.
uncredited
Nor does it consider it accredited that such works were entrusted to EICO On Line as compensation for the fact that the defendants Alejandro de Pedro and José Antonio Alonso Conesa, especially the latter, influenced in some way that said presidents could access other public positions, well within the political party to which they belonged or within the province of León or the Autonomous Community.
The trial for the Leon piece of the Punic plot was seen for sentencing on February 23 and in its final conclusions the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor maintained the sentences it claimed -between 8 and 3 years and 5 months- considering that the former presidents of the Provincial Council de León Isabel Carrasco -assassinated in 2014- and Marcos Martínez Barazón instituted a parallel contracting network that notably damaged this institution.
Anti-Corruption maintained that in April 2012 De Pedro and Alonso Conesa “recruited as a client” the then president of the León Provincial Council and, after her murder in 2014, her successor, Marcos Martínez Barazón, to improve their public image through the companies EICO and Madiva.
Image
The initial objective, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, was for EICO to clean up Carrasco’s reputation on social networks and disseminate a positive image of him to neutralize news about his alleged involvement in legal cases and allegations of alleged corruption, all of this at the expense of the budget of the Provincial Council, whose contracting agencies were not even aware of these services.
According to the public ministry, when Martínez Barazón became president of the Provincial Council after the crime against Isabel Carrasco, “a new plan” was agreed upon so that the companies involved in the plot could build a positive image for him before the citizens of Leon, jobs that “were paid for irregularly”.
The Prosecutor’s Office stressed that Martínez Barazón’s obsession was to be president of the PP of León and “he was willing to pay anything” and stressed that he promised De Pedro and Alonso the award of several public contracts in exchange for their interceding with the organs of the national PP. EFE