The National Court has sentenced the 19 accused who stood trial for the deployment of the Gürtel network, with the consequent payment of commissions, in the Madrid municipality of Arganda del Rey, including former PP mayor Ginés López and former president of Martinsa and Real Madrid Fernando Martín.
Eighteen of those nineteen accused accepted the sentences requested by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office during the trial, which substantially reduced their initial requests due to the confessions of all of them.
The only one who did not and denied involvement in the scheme was a lawyer, Luis B.T., former legal advisor to the Society for the Development of Arganda del Rey, who, nonetheless, was also sentenced to one year and eleven months in prison and nine years of disqualification.
Former Martinsa president implicates Correa in the allocation of land in Arganda del Rey
The Second Section of the Penal Court – responsible for judging all branches of the Gürtel case – has also imposed 5 years and 7 months in prison for Ginés López and 3 years and 4 months for Fernando Martín, sentences they have already accepted.
The ringleader of the Gürtel network, Francisco Correa, has added 8 years and 10 months in prison to the long sentence he has been serving for years for various parts of the mega-case, as has his trusted associate and former Secretary of Organization of the PP of Galicia Pablo Crespo. Both are already in third grade.
Another of the convicted individuals (sentenced to 6 years) is the former councilor of Arganda del Rey and former PP deputy in the Madrid Assembly Benjamín Martín Vasco.
Correa admits to kickbacks for allocations to the Gürtel network in Arganda del Rey
The sentence, known this Wednesday, establishes that Francisco Correa received 25 million euros from Fernando Martín and two other businessmen with common interests in Martinsa – one of whom is deceased – for his intermediation in having the City Council of Arganda del Rey allocate land to that company in 2004 to build housing units.
Both accused acknowledged this commission, one of the highest known in the Gürtel network proceedings.
In addition, Ginés López confessed to receiving cash and in-kind gifts totaling 545,328 euros between 2002 and 2008 for his efforts to award event and construction contracts to companies associated with Correa and others he represented, while Benjamín Martín Vasco admitted to receiving 363,295 euros from the network, with both individuals having repaid various amounts to meet their civil liabilities.
Francisco Correa to be granted semi-liberty due to positive behavioral evolution
Among those convicted in this branch of the Gürtel case is also María Josefa Aguado Olmo, former PP deputy in the Madrid Assembly and former head of Sports at the Society for Development, as well as municipal officials and employees of Correa in his business network.
The judges determined that crimes such as prevarication, fraud against public administrations, bribery, falsification of commercial documents, punishable insolvency, embezzlement of public funds, and offenses against the Treasury were committed.
However, they took into account the mitigating circumstance of undue delays and, for the 18 who accepted the prosecution’s case, also that of confession.
Supreme Court upholds conviction of Gürtel defendant for defrauding the Arganda City Council
This trial, focused on events that took place over twenty years ago, is the second-to-last in the Gürtel case, with the ringleaders of the network, Francisco Correa and Pablo Crespo, already appearing in a situation of third-degree imprisonment -open regime- after serving over a decade in prison for other parts of the network.
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