When Astapa erupted in 2008, “Malaya” was very fresh in the collective imagination. The dissolution of Marbella Town Hall weighed heavily and the spotlight turned to Estepona. Another mayor detained, municipal councilors, relatives, businessmen and civil servants… Handcuffed and taken into preventive detention, the nickname “little Malaysia” almost wrote itself. Once the subject had calmed down, ten years of investigation were carried out, declared complex, then in 2018, a tax qualification was obtained which highlighted absolute corruption within the Town Hall between 2003 and 2008, governed by the PSOE with the Estepona Party (PSE). , in the first years supported by the IU then by the AP. The prosecutor revealed not only the illegal financing of the PSOE and the PSE, but also a series of gifts and advantages that politicians received in exchange for facilitating the access of certain businessmen to companies in the city. For Antonio Barrientos, it was a “hidden source of income” that allowed him to save 71 percent of his salary between 2003 and 2008. This document specified that he had received gifts such as bottles of Gran Reserva or boxes of cigars, but also trips, dinners worth several thousand euros, hotels with expenses of 600 euros per night or checks of up to 25,000 euros. He stressed that he had received payment of the invoice of 236,000 euros for the renovation of a house he had acquired, valued at 580,000 euros. He wasn’t the only winner. The head of the City Hall, José Flores, was appointed director of “Box B” of the City Hall with bribes from businessmen and contributions to “Box C” with personal gifts and payments for PSOE and PSE events. According to Anticorruption, Flores obtained invitations to events and was paid 932.50 euros in 2007 for activities at the Milady Palace nightclub in Marbella. He thus continued to give in to what the investigation revealed with Francisco González, who was Flores’ subordinate in the sector. Town hall, where he was authorized to slow down or speed up files. The prosecution emphasized that, for this reason, he benefited from Christmas gifts from a company, such as a plasma screen, and from family vacations in Rivera Maya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. The leader of the PES, Juan Ignacio Crespo, also received, according to the prosecution, “large sums in cash”. The prosecutor’s office said he could not prove the origin of 42,000 euros of the 136,000 he spent on furniture in his house. “The VAR of instruction” Likewise, there were elected officials who created companies to confuse the assets of these companies. with their own staff. Garages, houses, premises, apartments… The defendants had significant and suspicious increases in assets. Some up to two million euros and others both in Spain and in other countries such as Morocco. Companies without paid staff to launder or front companies to hide transactions. However, as one of the defense lawyers pointed out before entering the room to hear the sentence of the 36 accused, “the trial is the VAR of the investigation”, and there, many pieces of evidence ended up. by being dismissed, like telephone tapping. this closed a large part of the prosecution’s case and was one of the crucial pieces of evidence to justify the requests for high sentences. So, during the trial, the case suffered a major blow. When the Prosecutor’s Office presented the sentencing requests to the Court, the case began to deteriorate. And yesterday, 17 years after the arrests in Estepona, there were only fines and bans for the members of this alleged conspiracy.
