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ARCHIVED - Ex-mayor in Almeria jailed for five years for embezzling 58.8 million euros
The public cash was pilfered from Ejido City Council coffers through a "business network" between 2002 and 2009
The former mayor of El Ejido, Juan Enciso, has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison for the embezzlement of more than 58.8 million euros of public money.
The cash was misappropriated from Ejido City Council between 2002 and 2009 through a 'business network' of subcontractors who over-invoiced Empresa Mixta de Servicios Municipales (Elsur), whose private partner was Abengoa.
The sentence was handed down by judge Jesús Martínez Abad at the Provincial Court of Almeria on Thursday March 30, after what the current mayor, Francisco Góngora, described as "undue delays".
The judge ruled that Enciso "committed embezzlement of public funds of particular gravity and continuously falsified commercial documents", but due to the mitigating circumstance of "undue delays" and time passed, the sentence was reduced.
The ex-mayor was acquitted of passive bribery and prevarication.
The court of the Third Section also sentenced El Ejido's former municipal auditor José Alemán to seven years and six months in prison and fined him 2.6 million euros for embezzlement and passive bribery.
Together with Enciso, Alemán is described as being at the centre of the "corrupt plot" driven by an "inordinate desire for money and enjoyment of power".
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office had requested 40 years in prison and fines totalling 23.2 million euros.
The 'Operation Poniente' investigation launched by the Prosecutor's Office exploded in October 2009 with the intervention of El Ejido Town Hall and the arrest of Enciso, along with 19 other people, including the administrators of the various subcontractors who overbilled Elsur to pilfer the public coffers. They have also been convicted.
El Ejido Mayor, Góngora, has since publicly pledged to "try to recover" the tens of millions of filched cash.
Image: Ayuntamiento de El Ejido
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