The Prosecutor’s Office accuses a senior Promálaga official of corruption and falsification of documents for demanding a bribe from a potential contractor of the Malaga public company. Francisco Muñoz, former economic and financial director of Promálaga (dedicated to the promotion and development of the city’s business), met with a director of a human resources company and asked him for half of the profits obtained with the last contract he had been awarded. ., promising him more hiring if he met their demands, according to the prosecutor’s indictment, to which this media has had access.
The trial is scheduled to take place before the First Section of the Provincial Court of Malaga on 1 and 2 July 2025, eight and a half years after the complaint that gave rise to the case, which dates back to March 2017. Muñoz was dismissed from his position as financial director of Promálaga in September 2019, when it was revealed that a court was investigating him at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. In 2017, Promálaga managed an annual budget of 12 million euros, which today stands at 22.3 million. The financial director received a monthly salary of 8,6523.59 euros.
The events date back to November 29, 2016. According to the prosecutor’s account, that day, Muñoz met in an Irish pub with a senior executive of a consulting and human resources company that had already had “business relations” with Promalaga. There, after telling him that the previous contracts were due to his intervention, “he demanded payment of 50% of the profit obtained with the last contract”, consisting of the hiring of an employee for the Document Management Service. In addition, he offered him the “possibility of continuing to provide his services in the future (…) in the event that he satisfied his demands”. At that time, Promálaga was renewing the contract for this service and preparing a new project.
The prosecutor recalls that, due to his position at Promálaga, Muñoz prepared the “needs reports” that justified the call for tenders and was part of the “advisory committee for procurement” in negotiated procedures without publicity. In addition, in some minor contracts, I carried out supplier search functions.
To cover up the alleged corruption, Muñoz and his wife allegedly prepared a false invoice for a supposed service provided by her, a lawyer by profession. The invoice amounted to 1,223.42 euros and was sent on December 12, 2016 to the businessman’s email address, who refused to pay and reported the senior official to the police in March 2017, after informing the director of Promálaga and a councilor of the consistory.
The prosecutor is requesting three years and ten months in prison and a fine of 10,800 euros for Muñoz for the crimes of falsification of commercial documents and corruption, and ten months in prison and a fine of 4,050 euros for his wife for the falsification.
Seven years of investigation and complaints of “opacity”
The Promálaga case caused a notable political stir in the city when it was revealed five years ago. The municipal opposition then demanded the opening of a commission of inquiry into the case, predicting a “corruption plot”. It demanded explanations from the mayor, Francisco de la Torre, for keeping Muñoz until September 2019, when the municipality knew he had been under investigation since late 2016. They also requested all the reports prepared by Muñoz. and the contracts he approved.
The plenary inquiry commission was dismissed and there has been no news of the case for five years. It helped that the judicial inquiry was conducted with absolute discretion and notable parsimony, which judicial sources blamed on this media outlet for the continuous appeals that were filed.
In order to prolong the procedure, the case was declared a “complex case”. Meanwhile, the PSOE has repeatedly denounced the “obscurantism” of the government team. For its part, the council has maintained that the case was subordinate court.
Today, and after seven years of investigation, the prosecutor has not found other cases that support the “corruption plot” denounced by the PSOE, beyond the initial case. At that time, Francisco Salas, director of Promálaga, already assured that he had not received any complaints other than the first one. If businessmen had agreed to pay a bribe, they would have committed the crime of active corruption. In other words, reporting it would be self-incrimination.
At the same time, the now accused managed to get the municipality, through Promálaga, to pay him 180,000 euros, as Sur published in 2020. After being dismissed “for disciplinary reasons” in September 2019, Muñoz went to court and had him dismissed. . was declared inadmissible. The ruling of the High Court of Justice, which this media outlet was able to consult, contained a reproach against the municipal company, which the magistrates discredited for the “delay” in applying the disciplinary dismissal.
“The truth is that the accused [Promálaga] He first became aware of them in late 2016 and, despite their content and scope, he took no action against them until late March 2017,” when he reported them to the police. Letting more than 60 days pass, the TSJA declared the disciplinary dismissal null and void and replaced it with an improper dismissal that required the council to compensate Muñoz.
The case of the racket
Muñoz, hired by Promálaga in 2003, had been preparing reports for this public company for years. As elDiario.es Andalucía later revealed, she developed two, not initially planned in the process (but required by the Promálaga sports area), which were decisive in the tender for the management contract of the Raqueta Center, a sports center built by the city council for the practice of paddle tennis and tennis on 22,500 square meters. The management was awarded in 2014 to Ferroser for twenty years and almost two million euros in total, in a highly controversial award.
Both reports allowed the first assessment to be corrected and the award to the company with the highest value in the sports sector to be ruled out.
At the time, the concession of the Raqueta Center to Ferroser for an annual fee of 92,000 euros over 20 years had caused a political and media stir due to the “shadows” of the file, according to the opposition. Ferroser (Ferrovial Services) already managed Inacua, a neighboring city. The Valssport company, with double the points in the sports offer, filed a contentious-administrative appeal, but then withdrew. Their manager explained to this media that he realized that “we were not right.”
Last February, the spokesman for the municipal government team accepted an agreement to transfer the concession to an entity formed by Rafael Nadal and Marbella developer Sierra Blanca Estates. However, Sur reported in May that difficulties had arisen in simply integrating the tennis player’s project into a simple concession transfer.
