The Supreme Court has shelved what is known as Matinsreg case by sentencing the former PP councilor in Jaén City Council Manuel del Moral to four years in prison and eight years of disqualification, whom he considers to be the ringleader of a “corruption scheme” focused on the massive overbilling of municipal services. The court emphasizes that it endorsed 99 irregular invoices despite the fact that a municipal technician reported the anomalies and was replaced.
In this case, in which three other businessmen from the firm awarded the urban maintenance services have been convicted, the Provincial Court acquitted the former popular mayor of Jaén between 2011 and 2015 and later Secretary of State for Finance, José Enrique Fernández de Moya, who sat in the dock accused of the crimes of prevarication and embezzlement of public funds of which he was accused. Fernández de Moya was also the one who hired the services of the company Matinsreg, from Zamora.
The popular councilor and provincial secretary of the PP, Miguel Ángel García Anguita, was also acquitted by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA), as there was no “sufficient evidentiary basis for the charge” to attribute to him the crime of embezzlement of public funds for his participation in the corruption scheme.
The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has now rejected the appeals presented by the former popular councilor and three other businessmen and. In a ruling that is final, it has confirmed the conviction of the TSJA.
In addition, all of them must jointly and severally compensate the Jaén City Council with 3,465,372.90 euros, and several companies have been declared subsidiary civil liability or lucrative participants for the sums received illegally.
According to the proven facts of the ruling, between 2012 and 2013, after the cessation of the previous maintenance company, a group of businessmen “arranged” with the then Councilor for Maintenance of Jaén, Manuel del Moral Negrillo, so that the company Matinsreg SLU would assume the fountain and lighting service.
The fraud consisted of the issuance of invoices “with unrealistic concepts and exorbitant prices.” For example, the ruling alludes to the fact that the City Council was billed for chlorine at 69 euros/liter, when the real acquisition cost was 0.23 euros/liter. 48,236 hours of labor were also billed, equivalent to a workforce of between 22 and 29 workers “that the company never had hired.”
For these crimes, the sentence for former popular councilor Manuel del Moral Negrillo to four years in prison and eight years of disqualification as the perpetrator of a continuing crime of embezzlement is confirmed. For their part, businessmen Isidoro Hipólito Cobo Sáiz and José Merino Acero have been sentenced to five years in prison and eight years of absolute disqualification as perpetrators of a continuing crime of falsifying a commercial document in a media competition with embezzlement of public funds. Finally, Luis Gregorio González Valero, administrator of the Matinsreg company, is sentenced to one year and 10 months in prison since the extenuating circumstances of late confession and reparation of damage and having deposited one million euros before the trial were applied).
The Supreme Court rejects the thesis of the defenses that asked to consider the events as a single action. It rules that there was criminal continuity because each invoice responded to independent orders and validations within a preconceived plan.
