Former Torrevieja PP councilor convicted of impropriety

The Eleventh Section of the Provincial Court of Elche has sentenced Carmen Gómez Candel (PP), the former councillor of Contracting and Urban Cleaning of Torrevieja, to 9 years of special disqualification for a crime of misconduct. She ordered Acciona to do a “shock cleaning plan” worth 188,829 euros by hand, without a contract, during the months of July and August 2019. The municipality has not been able to pay the multinational to this day.

The ruling says that the defendant “fully knew that her actions were arbitrary and that she was clearly breaking the law on public procurement” when she told Acciona, the cleaning and waste collection company, at the end of June 2019, shortly after she took office, to carry out “what she herself” called a “cleaning emergency plan,” with services listed in a budget she asked the company for. The councilwoman couldn’t give a “minimally reasonable” legal or technical explanation at trial to illustrate why this was against the law.

Two sentences

In less than six months, the former councilwoman has been found guilty of wrongdoing twice. She was banned from holding public office for seven years last July for ordering supplies to build a park in San Luis. Carmen Gómez was an important part of Mayor Eduardo Dolón’s and regional deputy Eduardo Dolón’s administration. She worked there until December 2023, when she had to go because the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office brought two charges against her. The former councilwoman said these charges didn’t exist until the day she quit. The 16-year restriction stops you from being a councilwoman, deputy mayor, or mayor, but it doesn’t stop you from holding any other public office.

Because of “his exclusive will”

In this case, Judge Cristina Betrián’s ruling says that “there is no record” that the councilwoman got “any report” showing the need for the service, a report on whether there was money in the budget to pay for the services being contracted, or a report on whether the prices were in line with market rates—things that Carmen Gómez Candel “decided solely on her own initiative.” It is known, nevertheless, that the councilwoman and Mayor Eduardo Dolón went to a news conference where she talked about the service, even though it hadn’t been contracted yet.

The councilwoman, who was in charge of that area, never told the City Council’s Contracting Department to start the contracting process so that it could be done “in accordance with the law, following the legally established procedure, which should always guarantee publicity and free competition among bidders given the value of the services.” She did this even though she thought it was necessary “solely of her own volition.” The ruling says that she knowingly and seriously broke the rules that govern public sector contracting, such as making tenders accessible to everyone, being open and honest, not discriminating, and treating all citizens equally. These actions made it harder to use public funds effectively, protect free competition, and choose the best offer.

The court says that the services that Gómez Candel directly ordered “were not only different from the normal ones that made up the regular street cleaning and urban waste collection service but were also different from the extra service that was provided every summer, which is what he said to defend himself.”

A contract was given straight to Acciona, which was neither necessary or required, according to the budget she had verbally agreed to. The ruling says that the City Council technician in charge of overseeing the service delivery warned the councilwoman several times, after the emergency plan had started, that it “should not continue because, in his opinion, it should be put out to public tender, given the amount involved and because it was a service separate from the regular street cleaning and waste collection.” “Despite these warnings,” the ruling says, “Ms. Carmen Gómez Candel ignored them,” which is why the technician wrote down the wrongdoing that “violated public procurement regulations.”

“Will without reason” The councilwoman, “showing her arbitrary will and determination in her illegal goals,” ignored the official’s orders, didn’t change the orders she had given to the contracting company, and kept an eye on the work being done under the emergency plan, even posting updates on the work’s progress on the Torrevieja City Council’s social media. The councilwoman, who was also in charge of Contracting, Parks and Gardens, and Personnel, ignored Acciona’s instructions on how to bill for the work when it was done. This resulted in a claim for €188,829 from the multinational for the months of July and August 2019. The former PP councilwoman said in court that the service was hired for free, but the verdict says that there is no resolution to that effect. The court also says that the fact that other work “had already been done” before the emergency plan, according to her version, “does not justify her conduct.” This reasoning is because the Supreme Court’s case law says that committing a crime before another crime does not justify or exonerate that crime.