Early this morning, the National Police launched an operation for political corruption that, as police sources confirm to La Vanguardia, affects the Coalación por Melilla; the party involved in the alleged plot to buy and sell votes by mail “on a large scale”—according to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office—during the regional elections of May 2023.
The operation, which is still underway, is directed by the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 2 of Melilla, which keeps the proceedings secret. At the moment, the National Police has reported, six arrests and seven entries and searches have been carried out. The crimes investigated are membership in a criminal organization or group, fraud in public procurement, administrative prevarication, influence peddling, document falsification and embezzlement of public funds.
In May 2023, on the eve of the municipal and regional elections, a scandal broke out in the autonomous city due to the alleged purchase and sale of votes by mail, which the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office described as “large scale” when it took over the investigation. . That decision was made due to “the seriousness and significance from the social and political point of view” and “given the intention to alter the free expression of the popular will” in the elections.
According to the Public Ministry, that criminal operation began following the publication in the BOE of the electoral call, and would have been carried out, according to the investigations carried out, by several people related to the Coalition for Melilla.
These individuals, according to the tax decree, “would form an organized structure, with prior and concerted planning, and the purchase of votes would also be financed with part of the funds obtained by companies and individuals related to the political party indicated in public tenders, agreements , contracts and subsidies that would have been awarded during the last legislature in the autonomous city.”
All of this, that decree from the attorney general pointed out in May, could constitute electoral crimes but also embezzlement, prevarication, bribery and document falsification.
Correos reported that it accepted 5,814 postal votes in Melilla as valid, almost half of the 11,727 applications processed. A figure that tripled the 4,210 votes for this procedure that were registered in the 2019 elections, out of a census of about 60,000 people.
