Those responsible for the entity Taula del Tercer Sector Social Sitges-Garraf have been released with charges after spending two days in cells detained by the National Police. Vilanova’s investigating court 8 has ordered their release after both were arrested in an anti-corruption operation for having benefited from alleged irregular subsidies from the Sitges City Council. The mayoress of the municipality, Aurora Carbonell, from ERC, and eight municipal officials were also arrested in the operation but were released hours later. The crimes of prevarication, embezzlement and documentary falsification weigh on them. Those arrested who have gone to court this Friday are a married couple who created a social entity that carried out services for the city council by awarding subsidies and minor contracts. The investigation, which began in May 2022, has found indications that those arrested used the public funds they received from the city council for private use. In five years they received 600,000 euros.
In their judicial statement this Friday, those arrested have accepted their right not to testify. The judge ordered to carry out several searches last Wednesday in Sitges municipal offices and in the beneficiary entity of public aid in search of documentation proving the alleged embezzlement. The judge, in the order in which she justified the searches, pointed out that the city council “divided the amount of the contract that is adjusted to the quantitative limit of the minor contract”, “dispensed with the principles of publicity and free competition that must be present in the administrative contracting” and stressed “that the services were always granted in favor of the same chosen professionals”. In addition, the judge indicates that those responsible for the entity provided “false documentation” to justify the granting of the subsidies.
In this case, a total of 13 people are being investigated: the mayoress, 8 councilors from the Sitges City Council, the former mayor of the city, Miquel Forns, from CiU, and 4 individuals who were part of the investigated cooperative. The case began with a complaint filed by city council officials led by the detained mayoress who reported the alleged irregularities that had been detected. The Sitges City Council, in a statement, assured that it detected possible irregularities in public aid and from that moment on “stopped the subsidies, reviewed the files and began the process for the return of the subsidies that were not fully justified”.
