The nine defendants in this case, the so-called “main case” of Operation Brugal, face additional penalties in addition to the jail terms and fines imposed for manipulating the Orihuela rubbish collection contract in the early years of this century. Five of them, including Monica Lorente, the town’s Mayor at the time, two of her councillors, Antonio Rodríguez Murcia and Ginés Sánchez Larrosa, businessman Ángel Fenoll, and one of his associates, Francisco Javier Bru, will also be required to jointly and severally compensate the Orihuela City Council with more than five million euros, the amount determined by the assessment of the harm their actions caused to public funds.
In addition to this civil liability, nine of the 33 defendants in this case—there were 34, but one of them passed away during the proceedings—were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four months to three years and nine months by the Alicante Provincial Court this week. The sentence can be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Lorente, the Mayor of Orihuela from 2007 to 2011, was sentenced to four months in prison and twenty months of disqualification for prevarication in conjunction with fraud by the section’s magistrates, José Teófilo Jiménez and Gracia Serrano. Her former councillors, Rodríguez Murcia, Sánchez Larrosa, and Manuel Abadía Martínez, were sentenced to four months, five months, and one year in prison, respectively.
Jose Manuel Espinosa, the former City Council auditor, was also sentenced to eight months in prison; Fenoll, the owner of Proambiente SL and Colsur SL, was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison; his son was sentenced to one year; and two of his associates were sentenced to four and eight months in prison, respectively.
José Manuel Medina, the former mayor and Lorente’s predecessor, is also among those acquitted.
Politicians and businesspeople performing together
The Court has determined that there was a conspiracy in the Orihuela City Council between 2000 and 2011 between the convicted politicians, Fenoll, and members of his inner circle to keep Urbaser from being awarded the garbage collection contract and to continue providing the service for his companies, Colsur SL and Proambiente SL.
The resolution claims that this led to needless delays and the arbitrary declaration of the competition as void, even though there was no justification for it and all reports supported Urbaser, which had no choice but to use the contentious-administrative route to assert its right to be awarded the contract.
The City Council made the payment
In early 2021, Emilio Bascuñana, a member of the People’s Party, presided over the Orihuela City Council, which authorised the compensation award of 4,747,388 euros after the court found in favour of the firm. A few months prior, in September 2020, the financing needed to make it effective had been authorised.
The sentence declares the subsidiary civil liability of both companies and adds 517,502.73 euros for the 6% industrial profit of Colsur SL (now Sistemas Recogida de Residuos Medioambientales SL) and 79,379.70 euros for the 6% industrial profit of Proambiente SL to the amount that the five convicted individuals who the court considers directly responsible for the rigging must now face.
In addition, the nine guilty people have been mandated to pay all of the legal fees, including the private prosecution’s.
The second decision
This is the Alicante Provincial Court’s second decision in the matter pertaining to the solid waste removal and street cleaning contract that the Orihuela City Council granted. Following the ruling that wiretaps and searches were unlawful, all 34 defendants were found not guilty in the initial proceedings. Judges Jiménez and Serrano have already done so after the High Court reversed that acquittal in July 2024, upheld the previously rejected evidence, and mandated a fresh decision that included its assessment.
A punishment that might have been more severe
In the Orihuela waste case, the punishment may have been more severe. This is implied by the court’s reference to “criminal acts” backed by incriminating evidence that was not taken into account when rendering the decision “because it was not subject to cross-examination during the trial.”
The judges are referring to the evidence that was not presented at the oral hearing despite repeated requests from the anti-corruption prosecutors to do so in order to avoid what ultimately transpired, rather than the evidence that the Alicante Court invalidated after it was presented at trial in the first sentence of this process (primarily wiretaps and searches), which the Supreme Court then forced to be assessed in order to issue this second ruling.
“We cannot consider the presumption of innocence of the accused to be overturned based solely on this incriminating evidence, simply because it was not subject to cross-examination during the trial,” the ruling states, summarising the criminal acts reflected in these telephone conversations (which were invalidated during the preliminary proceedings). Its contents were not questioned by the accused or witnesses, especially the police officers. A different conclusion would be in violation of both the right to a fair trial and the right to a defence.
Proof that a crime has occurred
The court declares that only this evidence would offer definitive indications regarding the possibility of the existence of a fraud offence after “considering all the evidence and in particular the content of the wiretaps of the prepaid terminals.”
Judges Jiménez and Serrano claim that the November 2007 decision by the then-mayor and her councillors Rodríguez and Sánchez to declare the garbage collection tender void “was taken being fully aware of the arbitrariness of their actions and the illegality of said decision as it was not justified, thus violating the regulations on public procurement.”
The ruling further describes how political officials gave the main convicted individual, Ángel Fenol, and his associates secret information about contracts. It also describes the presents this businessman gave to various councillors in exchange, including financial payments.
Author: Derek Appleton
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