The PP refuses to separate Albiol as established in its statutes and alleges that prevarication is not corruption

by time news

The PP saves, for the moment, its candidate for Mayor of Barcelona, ​​Xavier García Albiol, whom a judge has sent to trial for three crimes of the Penal Code of prevarication by public officials and that the General Council of the Judiciary reflects as “crimes related to corruption”. A circumstance that, according to the Statutes in force of the PP, should suppose the immediate suspension of militancy by the National Committee of Rights and Guarantees, until the sentence is handed down. If this is condemnatory, the expulsion is also immediate.

Corruption under the carpets of Genoa 13

Further

From the national PP they assure that “it is not corruption”, they keep Albiol in his positions and discharge the responsibility of making any decision about the candidate in the Catalan PP. But sources from the Catalan PP, led by Alejandro Fernández, point out that Albiol is a member of the national campaign committee and that, therefore, the file corresponds to the direction of Alberto Núñez Feijóo who, according to the Statutes, could urge the Rights Committee and Guarantees to open a disciplinary procedure.

A Badalona judge has sent Albiol to trial for the case of the telephone masts allegedly fraudulently installed in the municipality during his mandates. According to the instructor, who has already finished his investigation and has recorded it in a car, the then mayor and other members of the municipal government also accused allowed the fraudulent installation of mobile phone antennas between 2012 and 2018.

Some of them were placed in public buildings, such as a police station of the Urban Police, without the corresponding fees being paid and without an urban planning or environmental license or the necessary patrimonial file when affecting a municipally owned facility.

The Prosecutor’s Office requests two years and 10 months in prison for Albiol, who is trying to recover the Barcelona city for the PP. Albiol is one of the main bets of Alberto Núñez Feijóo for Catalonia, where the right tries to recover a minimal presence after the electoral debacles of recent years.

Feijóo has integrated Albiol into his national campaign team, where he acts as coordinator of mayoral candidates. And he shared a rostrum with him at one of the itinerant sectoral conventions that the PP prepared. The subject of that monograph was one of the favorites of the candidate for Badalona: the squatting of homes.

Albiol is not, thus, just any candidate for a more or less large city. He is someone relevant in the party and for the current leadership, which defends that the cause in which he is immersed “is not corruption.” “There is no enrichment of anyone,” sources from Genoa told elDiario.es, despite what the judge says in his order. The same sources point out that “he says that he did not” know anything and that “it will be seen in the trial.” And they insist: “For us it is not a case of corruption.”

But the PP Statutes approved in 2017 when Mariano Rajoy was still in charge are clear. In article 21, section 7 letter b), the internal rules of the party ensure that “the provisional suspension of affiliation will be automatically agreed by the National Rights and Guarantees Committee” when “a member is involved in criminal proceedings in respect of which an order to open an oral trial has been issued for a crime related to corruption.”

“A court in Catalonia accelerates in the middle of the pre-campaign”

And is Albiol corruption? According to the General Council of the Judiciary, yes. The investigating judge accuses him of “a continuous crime of prevarication of art. 404 CP”, a “continued crime of urban prevarication” (320.2) and “a continuous crime of environmental prevarication” (329.2). The first two appear as “crimes related to corruption” in the repository of the governing body of judges.

But according to the PP, no. And the statutes only speak of “corruption”, in a wording ambiguous enough so that the party does not apply it to Albiol and, nevertheless, does apply it to the resigned deputy Alberto Casero, who is facing a trial in the Supreme Court for a crime of prevarication that did not mean, according to the judge, enrichment.

“It is a provisional antenna that a company placed without a license on a farm 12 years ago,” point out the same sources, which ignore that the case goes much further by involving the former Badalona councilor and current PP candidate for mayor of Santa Coloma of Gramenet, Miguel Jurado, or the former mayor of Urbanismo Oriol Lladó, of ERC.

In the PP they also assure that “the Prosecutor’s Office” has activated the case “in full controversy for the ‘yes is yes'”, and that “a court in Catalonia accelerates in the middle of the pre-campaign”.

Albiol: “It’s no coincidence”

The PP candidate in Badalona on May 28, Xavier García Albiol, has defended his innocence this Wednesday in a video after being prosecuted by a judge for various crimes of prevarication during his time as mayor of the Catalan town. “It is no coincidence, two months before the municipal elections,” says Albiol in the video.

The candidate thus joins the thesis of the PP, which points to both the Prosecutor’s Office and the instructor for having “accelerated” the cause two months before the municipal elections: “It is a matter of 12 years ago that the prosecutor’s office is active in full controversy for the yes is yes and that a court in Catalonia accelerates in the middle of the pre-campaign ”.

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