The mayor of Badalona (Barcelonès Nord), Xavier Garcia Albiol, has assured this morning that he gave the order that “not one euro” be paid for the works that his former councilor David Gómez allegedly awarded by finger during his first term, and that the control mechanisms worked “perfectly”.
In the second session of the trial held today Tuesday in the seventh section of the Barcelona Court, Albiol has been the first person to testify and has assured that when he learned of some invoices for works that had not been commissioned, he gave the order not to payment was made.
The Prosecutor’s Office requests two years and three months in prison and 17 and a half years of disqualification for the former PP councilor, who Albiol removed when he learned of the alleged irregularities, for alleged crimes of prevarication and fraud against the public administration, accused of having awarded by hand works worth almost a million euros from the town hall that were never paid for.
The public ministry, in a trial with a total of 11 defendants -eight of them businessmen-, maintains that Gómez was responsible for carrying out illegal works from July 2011 to October 2012, using his status as services councilor social and health to irregularly award contracts.
The indictment maintains that Gómez hired “orally, without technical reports justifying the need to carry it out and in any case without following any procedure” to various companies for “both major and minor” works in municipally owned premises.
During his statement as a witness, Albiol has assured that, when he learned of the facts, he notified “by circular to the intervention service that no invoice is paid that has not followed the corresponding administrative procedure.” “You cannot contract any service or any work that does not follow the administrative procedure, it is that I cannot do it, not even as mayor,” he maintained.
The mayor of Badalona has indicated that a neighbor alerted him that they were carrying out important works in a municipal building, located on Badajoz street, and that David Gómez told him that a debris removal was being carried out, although Albiol sent his then first deputy mayor of the Treasury, Ramon Riera, to go check it out.
Albiol explained that Riera found that the works that were taking place were larger than what Gómez claimed, for which reason they decided to send the Urban Police “to draw up the minutes, and that is where the investigation begins.”
For his part, Ramon Riera, who also testified this morning at the trial, explained that when he appeared at the works by order of the mayor “I asked them for the works permit, I called the Urban Police”, who appeared and that what he did “was identify the people who were there.”
“I had no knowledge of the works that were being done there,” Riera said, who also highlighted that these interventions had the light tapped to carry them out and that the municipal police sealed them off when they went there because “they did not have the permits corresponding, nor work: there was nothing”. “I think they broke the seal and finished it,” said the former mayor about what happened to those works.
David Gómez became a councilor in 2011 and was part of the Albiol government during his first term, and was appointed head of Social and Health Services and also vice president of the Municipal Institute of Personnel Services (IMSP) until he was expelled in 2012, both from local executive as well as the PP before the irregularities he allegedly committed.
The Prosecutor’s Office also requests two years in prison and eight years of disqualification for a former coordinator of the La Salut neighborhood in Badalona, ??Júlia S., accused together with her husband of carrying out works with the concept of “maintenance of public roads” on behalf of the city council. the true purpose of rehabilitating his private home after an “accident caused by the rain”.
