The PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) files a complaint against the mayor of Algeciras before the Supreme Court Prosecutor's Office for embezzlement.

The PSOE (Socialist Workers' Party) of Algeciras filed a document this Wednesday with the Supreme Court's Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office informing the Public Prosecutor's Office about the alleged involvement of the mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce (PP), in alleged crimes of prevarication, embezzlement of public funds, and negotiations prohibited by law for public authorities.

This was announced by the general secretary of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) in Algeciras and spokesperson for the Socialist Municipal Group, Rocío Arrabal, at a press conference with the secretary of organization of the local Executive and deputy spokesperson, Fran Fernández, in which she provided various information on these events, which will have to be investigated by the High Court, given the status of the PP senator as a member of parliament. These events refer to the alleged collection by Landaluce, as the owner of a medical center for driver's recognition, of "invoices paid for years by the City Council to municipal officials, and approved under his presidency as mayor," which, according to the PSOE, is "absolutely prohibited" by the Penal Code.

Read also

"Conflicts of interest can be a gateway to corruption," the PSOE spokesperson stated during her address to the media, with whom she shared images of invoices and other evidence that have also been forwarded to the Prosecutor's Office, so that "it is the courts that initiate the corresponding proceedings and determine the appropriate responsibilities."

Arrabal stressed that, "regardless of whether, during Landaluce's 14 years as mayor, officials have been able to freely choose which medical center they wished to visit to renew their driver's license—that's a different issue altogether—what's truly relevant, not only from an ethical point of view but also from a legal one," is that "the mayor has been approving the payment of invoices for his private business with public money."

"We already know that Landaluce will soon send someone to say that all this is nothing more than a hoax from the PSOE, or that he did it 'to help,' as he did, to try to get out of the situation with the screenshots and Laura Ruiz's silence, which he continues to maintain as if his life depended on it," he lamented.

"As always, he will try to deceive the public and convince them that everything he does wrong is the fault of the rest of us, but the reality is what it is," added the Socialist spokesperson, who explained to the media the content of Article 439 of the Penal Code, which covers the crime of abuse of authority, with prison sentences of six months to two years, a fine of twelve to twenty-four months, and special disqualification from public employment or office and from exercising the right to passive suffrage for a period of two to seven years.

The leader of the PSOE in Algeciras reminded reporters that "incompatibilities are essential to maintaining integrity and transparency in the public service, preventing public servants from benefiting from their position or their personal interests from interfering with the general interest." She explained that the aforementioned invoices for driver's license renewals at the Landaluce medical center, which "have been paid in full to the workers under the labor agreement, have been approved during these years, unanimously, by governing boards chaired by the mayor himself."

After presenting the documents containing a large portion of these invoices to the cameras, the Socialist spokesperson also pointed out that "the Law Regulating the Foundations of Local Government establishes that mayors must abstain from participating in the deliberation, voting, and decision-making of matters in which they have a personal interest that could generate a conflict of interest." She also emphasized that "if a mayor does not abstain when required, his or her decisions could be annulled by the courts, and he or she could incur criminal liability."

Conflict of interest and abuse of power

The PSOE spokesperson recalled that, "if he had wanted to do things properly, the mayor could have opted, when this discount for civil servants was approved, improving the agreement, to put this service out to tender, but of course, then he wouldn't have been able to apply." He could also "have refrained from performing medical examinations on civil servants of the City Council of which he is mayor-president, referred these services to other medical centers with no connection to him, or not participated in any decision related to the approval of these expenses, but that wasn't the case," she added.

"The mayor has intervened doubly in these operations: as the provider of the medical service and as the authority approving the payment, benefiting financially from a decision in which he participated as an authority, in a clear case of conflict of interest and abuse of power, on which the courts will now have to rule," the Socialist spokesperson added.

Read also

"We have said on many occasions that the mayor uses the City Hall and municipal officials as if it were his estate," added Fernández, who provided some other examples during his speech of Landaluce's behavior, a mayor "with two masks," a "wolf in sheep's clothing" who "little by little is being unmasked before the citizens of Algeciras."

Regarding the treatment given to the opposition, and the use of the municipal institution by someone who represents all the people of Algeciras, Fernández revealed to journalists that "we once even received a letter from the lawyer of the mayor's mother, because we had requested documentation from the City Council, not from her, nor from her lawyer, regarding the work on a building that she owns. Who forwarded our letter to this woman and her lawyer, if we had registered it with the City Council?" he asked in conclusion.