The head of the Superior Body of the Junta de Andalucía, Aurora Romeraone of the sixteen people acquitted this Friday by the third section of the Provincial Court of Seville for the alleged rigging of the international call for tenders for the award of the mine … de Aznalcóllar, said that the news made them “happy, because we were already calm because we had the truth” and criticized the fact that the process, which he came to describe as an “ordeal”, lasted ten years: “It’s inconceivable, we lived a nightmare, when we had only done our job.”
“There are no words to describe what we and our families felt during these ten years and after the acquittal. We feel happy, because we were already calm, despite this decade that we have lived,” Romera said in an interview on Cadena Ser.
It should be noted that the sentence acquits the defendants of the crimes of influence peddling, continuous administrative malfeasance, embezzlement of public funds, fraud, negotiations prohibited to civil servants and environmental procrastination that they attributed the accusations made by Emerita Resources España SLU, SC Andalucía Mining and the Provincial Federation of Environmentalists in Action, considering that “there is no indication of the crimes attributed and that it is an unfounded accusation.”
In this sense, Romera highlighted the “disbelief” with which the people interviewed experienced the process. “We couldn’t believe what was happening because we had done our job,” he added. According to the official, the sentence does “justice” and “reveals the bad faith of each of those responsible for sitting us unfairly on the bench and for having lied for ten years”.
Asked about the length of the proceedings, which spanned a decade, Romera stressed her feeling of “unfairness” in having resulted in criminal proceedings. “The emotional cost, the suffering for us and our families is incalculable.. “We went through a difficult and unfair process,” he stressed. »Our social and professional reputation, the psychological and physical damage we have suffered and continue to suffer. It is irreparable, but we must move forward,” he lamented.
While the court said there was no “evidence or indication” and the accusation was “unfounded,” Romera acknowledged his own perplexity. “My colleagues and I wonder how it is possible for a trial to take place when we knew we were going to have an oral trial.” At this point, he pointed the finger at the magistrate who reopened the case. “This question should be asked to the judge, after the investigator and the prosecutor have concluded that there is no crime and no evidence,” he concluded.