He Mercury casethe judicial investigation into urban corruption and influence peddling in the Sabadell City Council during the mandate of former socialist baron Manel Bustos, has resurfaced this Tuesday in the Barcelona Court for just 1,816 euros. It is the money that the BMW Sitjas Motor dealership in the town saved irregularly in taxes after hiding from the municipal Treasury the expansion of the facilities to reduce the Economic Activities Tax (IAE) bill, in a case that attempts to elucidate possible crimes of document falsification, influence peddling and prevarication. On the first day of the trial, which will last throughout the week, the three main defendants have acknowledged part of the facts: the owner of the dealership, Antoni Sitja, the tax advisor José María Caballero, and the person who carried out the works, Melquíades Garrido, uncle of Mayor Bustos and then also president of the Builders’ Guild.
The events date back to 2009. Then, Sitja commissioned Garrido to expand his workshop, which went from 250 meters to 1,153 square meters. “The little work”, as Garrido has described it, represented a leap in the City Council’s accounting for tax purposes. Hence, Caballero supposedly urged to regularize the work in 2011 to save the increase that should have been paid in previous fiscal years. To do this, an attempt was made to find a formula to try to regularize the works, but with effect in 2011. For this purpose, he contacted Melquíades Garrido, who assured that he did not make any invoice because Sitja, a friend of his, also offered him maintenance services for his cars, so one job could be offset by others.
The situation, however, changed when municipal oversight appeared. “Given the insistence and the apparent need, I offered to find out if, with some delivery notes for materials, they could certify that it had been done,” admitted Garrido, who acknowledged this Tuesday that he contacted Montserrat Capdevila, then councilor of Sabadell and today director of the territorial services of the Department of Education in Vallès Occidental, to find a formula with which the City Council would validate the works. The contacts in the City Council began with Capdevila, who is also accused, and with two more municipal technicians, to whom the then president of the Sabadell builders assures that he only made technical consultations.
After failing to find a solution, they found a local builder, José Adrobau (deceased), willing to produce an invoice to validate the work dated 2011 and thus regularize the situation. Sitja has barely responded to the prosecutor’s questions with monosyllables and, urged by his lawyer, has acknowledged his regret for the events. For his part, Caballero has admitted that the false invoice was the one that was presented to municipal authorities, although he has said he does not know when the expansion work actually took place.
The Prosecutor’s Office requests a sentence of one year and eight months for Sitja, the same as for Caballero. For Garrido, the sentence requested before the trial was held reaches one year and four months, the same sentence that threatens Capdevila. In this piece there are a total of 10 people charged.
The operation to avoid 1,816 euros from the Sabadell treasury is one of the six cases that are still alive in the operation mercuryan investigation by the Mossos d’Esquadra was launched in 2012 and which, for the moment, has taken Bustos to prison for small manipulations behind the law. The former mayor is accused in two pending pieces in which possible cases of influence peddling are being investigated. His uncle, Melquíades Garrido, is being investigated in another case for another case of document falsification.
