“There are no adjectives to describe the situation in which the persons accused in this procedure find themselves (protected, let us not forget, by the right to the presumption of innocence) following the extension of a procedure begun in 1997, that is to say more than twenty-seven years ago now. »
Rarely are judges so clear when it comes to recognizing the dysfunctions of justice. The Court of the Tribunal of Tarragona is also in the sentence by which it acquitted three defendants, including the former urban councilor of Tarragona Àngel Fernández, accused of prevarication and influence peddling in the Parc Central case, alleged irregularities which turned out to be criminally irrelevant.
Magistrates do not spare adjectives when it comes to regretting the delay in the file. “Disproportionate, irrational, illogical, etc., they do not meet the definition of a procedure in which all the resources of the judicial system have failed,” they say. The case summary was over 30,000 pages long.
The trial began in September 2024, but the case had already accumulated an unprecedented delay in Spain: the investigation phase lasted more than fifteen years, and the intermediate phase before the trial lasted “as many years”, specifies the court. The events occurred 30 years ago.
Those now acquitted were charged with a continuing crime of influence, a continuing crime of prevarication and money laundering, facts. The case concerned the sale and purchase of land on which a large shopping center of the Basque company Eroski, Parc Central, was subsequently built.
The three men are accused of having intervened in administrative decisions for the development and management of the Parc Central shopping center project outside the law, but the court rejects the existence of sufficient evidence to convict them.
About The Author
