“They lack indicative elements that justify a criminal investigation beyond the verification of the contracting files.” In this way, the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Corruption and Organized Crime has archived the two complaints against the awards of the A-5 motorway burial project to the company Subterra IngenierÃa S.L, the Madrid City Council reported in a statement.
The file began in February of this same year, when the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office initiated investigative proceedings for the tender for the A-5 burial project, which was awarded by the Madrid City Council to the Esteyco-Subterra company, where Rafael works. Carabante, the brother of the Mobility and Environment delegate, Borja Carabante.
In the complaints, raised by the acting councilor of the Mixed Group in the Madrid City Council, Marta Higueras, and the then Podemos candidate for Madrid Mayor’s Office, Roberto Sotomayor, the City Council was accused of committing alleged crimes of administrative prevarication, influence peddling, bribery and illicit association, which have now been flatly rejected by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The people denounced, in addition to the Carabante brothers, were the then mayor of Madrid, José Luis MartÃnez-Almeida; the spokesperson for the municipal Executive, Inmaculada Sanz; and MarÃa Dolores Ortiz Sánchez, General Director of Mobility of the Madrid City Council.
The Prosecutor’s Office, however, concludes that the complaints of Sotomayor and Higueras “lack indicative elements that justify a criminal investigation beyond the verification of the contracting files, also considering that this would mean a review of the administrative legality of that public contracting “, for which the file of the case agrees.
In the opinion of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, regarding the crime of administrative prevarication, there are no “minimum indicative elements” in the contracting file that “allow us to assess that the service award contract” to the company where Borja Carabante’s brother worked is “an arbitrary resolution†regarding the Penal Code.
The same occurs in the case of influence peddling. The Prosecutor’s Office accepts the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court when pointing out that a “suggestion” is not enough as an efficient influence on the action or decision of another person derived from the position of the active subject, “which is not proven” or “minimally indicativeâ€.
Regarding the alleged crime of bribery, the Public Prosecutor understands that the “mere relationship of kinship” between the Mobility delegate and his brother does not per se prove the existence of a request or receipt of a favor or compensation, which is not proven either, as nor does it conclude that the plurality of people denounced has been concerted for a criminal purpose, as required by the crime of illicit association, which is also ruled out.
In statements sent to the press, the acting Mobility and Environment delegate, Borja Carabante, has assured that the file of the complaint shows that the left “only wanted to muddy the municipal management and set up a political circus” in which there was no “nothing illegal or irregular”.
“These people who denounced knew from minute one that their complaints were going to be archived because they knew that there was nothing illegal or irregular. Despite this, they did not hesitate to make a tortious and immoral use of justice,” he added.
