The President of the Court of First Instance and Investigation number 3 of Caravaca de la Cruz has agreed to continue the proceedings against José Vélez, mayor of Calasparra between 2017 and 2019 and general secretary of the Socialists of Murcia, the two councilors of Festejos who succeeded each other on those dates, Jordi Arce Corbalán and Antonio José Merino Moreno, as well as the administrator of the company Chipé Producciones, for their alleged participation in the crimes of embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds on the occasion of the organization of the bullfighting celebrations of the Bullfighting Fair of Rice, coinciding with the morning bullfight organized by the City Council during the patron saint’s festivities.
The debates focus, according to the resolution, on the legal relations of the Consistory with the company for the transfer for the morning bullfight of the cattle rented for the bullfighting festivities of the Fair that took place in the afternoon and for which there was, according to the actions carried out, an agreement in 2017, in which a price to be paid of 30,000 euros was set by the City Council, a second agreement in 2018, with the same object in which the price to be paid was 37,000 euros, and a smaller contract of 15,000 in 2019.
The magistrate, after specifying chronologically the facts that are the subject of the investigation, indicated that over the course of three years, it has been observed how the Calasparra City Council has systematically assumed and paid with public money certain expenses whose direct or indirect beneficiary was the businessman investigated, either because they were payments directly to the Chipé company for unjustified invoices (and which the City Council did not demand either), or because they are specific expenses for the Rice Bullfighting Fair, a private activity, or because they constitute expenses related to the bullring, private property.
The disbursement exceeded the agreed prices
“In this way, the actual disbursement made by the City Council for the transfer of cattle for the bullfights far exceeded the prices agreed between the City Council and the company in the 2017 and 2018 agreements and in the small contract of 2019.”
The facts reported, “without prejudice to any subsequent qualification”, the order underlines, could constitute offences of administrative prevarication and misappropriation of public funds.
To conclude that the proceedings carried out so far “prove that there are sufficient reasons to attribute its commission to the persons investigated on an indirect basis”, it is therefore appropriate to continue the criminal proceedings.
Following this resolution, the Prosecutor’s Office and the other accused have 10 days to formulate a written indictment, requesting the opening of an oral trial or requesting the dismissal of the case, the operative part of the order is completed. The order is not final and is subject to an appeal for reform before the same body that issued it and a subsidiary appeal before the Provincial Court.
