Ready the macro-trial against Ballesteros, the PSC and the shadow of corruption at the Tarragona City Council

TarragonaIn October 2015, agents from the Civil Guard's economic crimes unit entered Tarragona City Hall to seize the recruitment files of the Municipal Institute of Social Services during the years 2011 and 2012. The Civil Guard, which carried out searches in different municipal offices that day, was obeying the Tarragona Instruction Court number 1, which was investigating possible irregularities following a complaint from the CUP in 2013. Thirteen years after that complaint, the trial arrives, involving a PSC heavyweight: the then socialist mayor Josep Fèlix Ballesteros. The Public Prosecutor's Office is requesting five years and eight months in prison for him. The PSC is accused of being a civilly liable party for lucrative purposes and already had to pay a bail of 276,157 euros. In total, there are nine people in this case accused of the crimes of prevarication, embezzlement of public funds, fraud, and document forgery, among others. And also five more people accused of being civilly liable parties for lucrative purposes, in addition to the PSC. Ballesteros' lawyer, David Rocamora, explains to ARA that they are eager for the trial to be held in order to be able to prove the former mayor's innocence.

Winning the elections

The goal of this corrupt plot that severely threatens the image of the socialists was, according to the Prosecutor's Office, to hire a group of workers with public funds to turn them into cyberactivists who would help improve the image of the then-socialist mayor and candidate for re-election, Josep Fèlix Ballesteros. Everything is set before the 2011 municipal elections, which Ballesteros ended up winning by enough of a margin to continue serving as mayor. To make this move possible, they called for a public tender that, according to the Prosecutor's Office, was rigged in advance to end up hiring the company Inipro, which was aware of the entire plan. According to the tender, the public contract was to create a "service for intervention and strengthening of the associationism of the newcomer population." The money, however, was used to pay the salaries of the cyberactivists, who were hired with money from the Tarragona City Council through Inipro.

The trial, which will be held at the old prison because there is not enough space at the Provincial Court, begins this Friday with the preliminary issues, which is the last opportunity that the defense and prosecution have to request new evidence or for some of the witnesses not to be taken into account. What the court decides based on what the parties present will not prevent the trial from being held, but it could influence its outcome. The defense of the accused will ask that the hard drive full of compromising emails that a worker from the Municipal Institute of Social Services of Tarragona (IMSST) handed over to the Civil Guard not be taken into account. The agents of the armed force had insistently searched for this evidence without success, until the worker found it "by chance," according to his testimony.

The hard drive is considered a key piece of evidence, but –whether it is accepted or not– there is much other evidence that, according to the Prosecutor's Office and the accusation brought by the CUP, proves the corrupt functioning of this plot.

The evidence

The first email from which everything begins was sent by Ricardo José Campás (head of the company Inipro, who died in 2016) in September 2009 to Gustavo Cuadrado, who was the chief of staff of the then-mayor Ballesteros. In that email, Campás told him that he had spoken with a certain "Óscar" regarding a "neighborhood revitalization in Tarragona" issue, and they arranged to hold a meeting which was also attended by Antonio Muñoz, managing director of the IMSST. According to the Public Prosecutor's Office and the CUP's accusation, they hatched the plan at that meeting. The public tender was called by the IMSST and was tailor-made for Inipro to win. Two other companies that were allegedly related to Inipro itself were invited, with the sole objective of trying to "give an appearance of legality to the fraud". There are intercepted emails that appear in the prosecution's documents where it is explained how this tender should be conducted, and there are also some that directly ask Inipro employees to create YouTube and Flickr accounts for the mayor.

Another key person in this plot is Begoña Floriá, who was then deputy mayor, spokesperson for the PSC municipal group, and head of the Communication area. For her, the Public Prosecutor's Office is requesting five years and five months in prison. For Gustavo Cuadrado, a person of trust to Ballesteros, the Public Prosecutor's Office is requesting five years and ten months in prison. Some of the accused hold positions in the current government of the Tarragona City Council and also in the Provincial Council.

Tarragona City Council was also part of the accusation, but the current mayor, also a socialist, Rubén Viñuales, ordered it to be withdrawn from the case three years ago, in a decision that sparked great controversy.