President of the Educational Court No. 1 of Almería, which is investigating the case Case masks María Belén Lopez, President of the Almería Provincial Council, asked the regional court to refrain from hearing the case, as confirmed by sources from the Supreme Court of Justice of Andalusia. The reason, according to other interlocutors familiar with the situation, will be linked to personal and family ties with the former president of this supra-municipal entity, Javier Aureliano García, who was investigated in the alleged illegal prize pool plot and who was one of the five arrested last week.
Now the regional court will issue its ruling on Lopez’s abstention and the case will go to another judge. Meanwhile, judicial sources indicate that the procedures have been halted due to the judge’s inability to approve anything or make any decision regarding the case. Judicial sources indicate that Lopez was on leave for a year and a half, during which time the investigation fell to regional judge Eduardo Martinez Gamero.
It was this judge who last week signed the order that led to Garcia’s arrest Number two And the former Vice President of the Provincial Council, Fernando Giménez, another technician of that entity, and already the former Mayor of Vines, Rodrigo Sánchez Simón, and his son Rodrigo Sánchez López. The judge was scheduled to be reinstated on November 25, and she has only now asked to be removed from the case. According to the interlocutors, Lopez is a relative of the former president of the provincial council – a distant cousin – and they are from the same municipality of Palanegra.
directions Case masks It has gone through several courts. Initially, the person who heard about the case was Ángeles Fernández Tio, the president of the Investigative Court No. 8 of Barcelona who was at the time investigating Kilian López, the winner of the medical supplies contract signed by the Almería Provincial Council on April 8, 2020 worth two million euros and from which García, Jiménez and the then third vice president of the institution, Óscar Leiria. He was to receive bites, according to the order issued last week – for his alleged membership in an organization dedicated to drug trafficking, arms trafficking and money laundering (brought in the Killian Lopez case, in March 2023). In the course of this investigation, it was learned that the latter was waiting to pay for a shipment of a mask favored by a member of the provincial council. Thus, this part of the case was transferred to the Investigative Court No. 1 of Almería.
“We are not aware of the specificity of this point and what we really hope is to have access to the instructions for this new phase of the investigation so that we can request new measures,” says Javier Salvador, the legal representative of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party in Andalusia, who has emerged as a popular prosecutor. This new phase of the investigation, which focuses on the collection or facilitation of the collection of kickbacks due to alleged illegal recruitment by the Almería Provincial Council, has been promoted thanks to the order signed by Gamero last week.
In his writing, the judge credits Garcia with “full knowledge, consent and participation” in the alleged illegal contracting scheme with companies from the regional council over which he heads and appreciates “clear and very strong indications” of his possible involvement in “collecting or facilitating the collection of kickbacks.” To do this, it relies on conversations in coded vocabulary related to dentistry, which they shared in a joint conversation with Jimenez and Liria, in which they implied going to the dentist to indicate bites and handling money on trips or to pay mortgage loans or acquire real estate, without justifiable origin and unusual for a public official, according to the judge.