The last major corruption trial on the Costa del Sol with 50 accused, dealing with the irregular funding of Estepona City Council between 2003 and 2008, has started surprisingly. If the scope of the so-called Astapa case had already forced the trial to be divided into ten blocks, prosecutors this Monday requested the addition of a new one, the eleventh, which focuses on the origin of the investigation and the evidence. It’s a way of opening the door to retired Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, whom the main defendant, Antonio Barrientos, former mayor of Estepona, accuses of having “a clear influence” over the cops who started the operation, like his lawyer it put it this Monday. , María Gutiérrez, who requested the cancellation of “the entire order”. All the lawyers whose turn it was have joined the petition.
The trial started an hour late. It was not easy to organize the 40 defendants present – the rest were connected telematically – who will be charged with the crimes of untruth, fraud, embezzlement, bribery, subterfuge and influence-peddling. Neither do your lawyers. The private allegations were not made – like those by Estepona City Council itself – and there was little publicity, with media coverage ending with a dozen professionals. The court is trying to clarify responsibilities in an alleged plot hatched to underestimate municipal agreements in Estepona (population 74,493) with the aim of funding both the municipality and political parties, in addition to the personal enrichment of members of the network. All this at the beginning of the 21st century, the era of hits in the urban planning of the Malaga coast, which also splashed other municipalities in the area such as Marbella, Manilva, Casares or Ronda.
The main visible head of the Astapa case is Antonio Barrientos. As the photographers entered room four of the Malaga Provincial Court, the same room where the Malaya case was being heard, he got up to go to the toilet. The ex-Regidor, who spent six months in prison, made sure that he appeared in the picture. He was one of the defendants who has most publicly defended his innocence. The anti-corruption prosecutor wants him to be sentenced to 10 years and nine months in prison, 38 years’ suspension from public service and a fine. He is one of the largest warrants for arrest in this case, along with those of Pedro López, the former urban planning manager of Estepona City Council, and Francisco Zamorano, the mayor of Economy and Finance, whom prosecutors are seeking 11 years behind bars.
Prosecutors have also requested the summary release of two defendants on the statute of limitations for the alleged bribery crimes. It is another example of the slowness of justice in this case, the first hearing of which began 16 years after the investigations began and nearly 15 years after the first arrests were made – in June 2008. The prosecution itself has in its indictment the use of mitigating the inappropriate Stay granted for the convicted defendants.
Court sources believe the case, which has had more than a hundred defendants, will end up being watered down due to the time elapsed since its inception and its complexity. Also because of chronic shortage of resources on a matter comprising 128 main volumes with 351,114 pages and 646 pieces of documentation. Patience is required for the sentence. If the previous questions are processed this week and next week, the test phase will start on March 7th and will continue from there every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. That lasts at least until the summer.
The scope of the proceedings and the number of defendants made it necessary to divide the trial into ten thematic blocks. The types of contracts, urban development measures, bank deposits in Switzerland and Andorra, commission payments or municipal concessions are some of them. This Monday, prosecutor Valentín Bueno requested the inclusion of the eleventh: the origin of the investigation.
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His request is the same that the defense has made on numerous occasions, questioning the origin of the investigation and therefore demanding the annulment of the entire trial. This is what Antonio Barrientos’ lawyer, María Gutiérrez, has done, arguing for an hour that she is asking for this annulment for violating various rights that other lawyers have joined. The secrecy of communications – since the lawyer understands that the police wiretaps were taken without any evidence of crime or judicial control – or the right to a defense when the court does not recognize some evidence are some of the examples cited by Gutiérrez, who has mentioned Villarejo multiple times he was accused of “instrumentalization from the beginning of the police investigation”.
“He achieved what he wanted: to have a clear impact on the urban planning of Estepona and to carry out a manipulation of the directive through the influence of the officials of the UDEF [Unidad de Delitos Económicos y Fiscales de la Policía Nacional]who drew up the first 13 reports on this operation,” said the lawyer, who was repeatedly reprimanded by the President of the Court, Andrés Rodero. “You’ve been asking for almost an hour after 20 minutes, what a brevity!” he snapped it last time. The process will continue tomorrow.
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