Six and a Half Years in Prison for Former Mayor and Councillor of Santa Pola in Gran Alacant Clinic Case

La Sección Undécima de la Audiencia Provincial de Alicante, located in Elche, has sentenced former Santa Pola mayor Miguel Z.F. and former councillor Jorge P.A. to six and a half years in prison for continuous administrative malfeasance, in conjunction with fraud, and bribery in the Gran Alacant clinic case.

The Court has imposed the same sentences and for the same crimes (in the case of malfeasance as necessary cooperators) on the two doctors who managed this private clinic located in a municipally owned building in the same-named urbanisation.

Similarly, the sentence includes a two-year and three-month prison term and a fine, as an accomplice to bribery, for a clinic worker who is also the sister of the former mayor and partner of the convicted councillor. The Court has acquitted two other medical centre workers and the councillor responsible for the urbanisation.

The judges have proven that Miguel Z.F., mayor between 2003 and 2015, and Jorge P.A., councillor during 2003-2007 and 2011-2015, allowed the company Gran Alacant SL to operate as a private clinic in a municipal building without paying any rent or utility costs for water, electricity, etc.

They also did not require the payment of an annual fee or other obligations acquired under a contract between both parties, such as the service of monitoring temporary disability leave of officials, among other irregularities.

The Court considers it proven that the political leaders acted "in concert" with the clinic's managers and took advantage of their "position as city council leaders to benefit" from it by hiring affiliated individuals.

Among these individuals was a sister of the then-mayor and partner of the convicted councillor, who stopped attending her job without justification "aware that she would suffer no negative consequences for it," and whom the company continued to pay her full salary "in exchange for not being required to fulfil the remaining contractual obligations," the judicial resolution states.

The sentence, which can be appealed in cassation before the Supreme Court, also convicts Clínica Gran Alacant SL as a legal entity for continuous bribery, disqualifying it from obtaining aid and subsidies, contracts in the public sector, or tax or Social Security benefits.

Similarly, it obliges the two former officials and the two convicted doctors to jointly and severally compensate the Santa Pola City Council in the sum of 109,371 euros, of which 13,022 have already been paid by the accused company.