The head of the Education Court number 1 of Almería which investigates the case masks of the Provincial Council of Almería, María Belén López, asked the Provincial Court to abstain from the case, as confirmed by sources from the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia. The reason, according to other interlocutors familiar with the situation, would be linked to personal and family ties with the former president of that supra-municipal body, Javier Aureliano García, investigated in the plot of alleged irregular prizes and who was one of the five arrested last week.
Now the Provincial Court will decide on López’s abstention and the case will fall to another magistrate. Meanwhile, the trial is suspended as the judge cannot agree on anything or make any decisions on the case, judicial sources indicate. López had been on leave for a year and a half, judicial sources report, and during this period the investigation was entrusted to the territorial judge, Eduardo Martínez Gamero.
This magistrate was the one who signed the order that led to García’s arrest last week number two and the former vice president of the Provincial Council, Fernando Giménez, another technician of that body, the former mayor of Fines, Rodrigo Sánchez Simón, and his son, Rodrigo Sánchez López. The magistrate was scheduled to be reinstated on November 25 and has only now asked to be removed from the case. According to interlocutors, López is related to the former president of the Provincial Council – a distant cousin – and they are from the same municipality, Balanegra.
The education of case masks It went through several courts. At first, Ángeles Fernández Tió, head of the Investigative Court Number 8 of Barcelona who at the time was investigating Kilian López, the winner of the medical supplies contract that the Provincial Council of Almería signed on 8 April 2020 for a value of two million euros and from which both García, Giménez and the then third vice-president of the institution, Óscar, became aware of the case Lyria. received bites, according to last week’s order – for his alleged membership in an organization dedicated to drug trafficking, arms trafficking and money laundering (filing for the case of Kilian López, in March 2023). Precisely during this investigation it was learned that the latter was waiting for payment for a shipment of masks favored by someone from the Provincial Council. Therefore, this part of the case was transferred to the Investigative Court Number 1 of Almería.
“We are not aware of the particularity of this point and what we really hope is to be able to have access to the instructions of this new phase of the investigation to be able to request new actions,” says Javier Salvador, legal representative of the PSOE of Andalusia, in his capacity as popular public prosecutor. This new phase of the investigation, which focuses on the collection or facilitation of the collection of commissions for alleged irregular hiring by the Almería Provincial Council, was promoted thanks to the ordinance signed by Gamero last week.
In his writing, the judge attributes to García “full knowledge, acquiescence and participation” in the project of alleged irregular contracting with companies of the Provincial Council chaired by him and appreciates “very clear and solid indications” on his possible participation in the “collection or facilitation of the collection of commissions”. To do this, it is based on conversations with encrypted words related to dentistry, which they shared in a joint chat with Giménez and Liria, in which they alluded to going to the dentist to refer to bites and the management of cash during trips or for the payment of mortgage loans or for the purchase of real estate, without justified origin and unusual for a public official, according to the magistrate.
