Torre Pacheco made it onto the national map of alleged property development-related fraud last week as a result of a joint investigation involving the Guardia Civil and San Javier court. Guardia Civil and court officers spent five hours poring over documents at the council building and left with a van packed with urbanisation dossiers.

According to insiders, the judicial investigation, which has not been declared secret, is based on allegations that the Town Hall has been granting favours to local construction companies and promoters, and stems from a complaint filed by a member of the public a few months ago with the public prosecution department of Murcia Superior Justice Tribunal. Proceedings started by chief prosecutor, Manuel López Bernal, led to a complaint filed with San Javier court, which is now being investigated by Judge Aránzazu Moreno.

To be exact, officers took away several boxes filled with dossiers of partial plans, land pooling, expropriations and even contractual documents dating from 2004 until the present. Council workers are reported to have cooperated fully with the Guardia Civil officers, and the mayor himself, Daniel García, claims to have offered to help. Judge Moreno is investigating the truth of allegations that council officers committed a number of offences including influence trafficking, prevarication, and even bribery related to the handling of various construction projects and in the resolution of urban development dossiers. The Guardia Civil is playing an active part in the investigation to the point of mounting surveillance on several politicians and businessmen implicated in the case.

In addition, the phones of some of the suspects have been tapped on orders of the investigating judge, according to sources close to the investigation, who also reveal that companies owned by relatives of some of the suspected councillors, that may have benefited from being awarded contracts, are also under investigation. The same sources also indicated that the Guardia Civil has been analysing thousands (maybe as many as 10,000) of conversations made during the last few months by those under investigation. These conversations were not just recorded by the court-authorised phone-taps, according to one suspect, who stated yesterday that he is convinced that the Guardia Civil had installed hidden microphones to find out with whom, and about what, he had been talking.

Regional PSOE spokesman, José Ramón Jara, denounced last year that the Town Hall does not govern Torre Pacheco, which he described as "captive." Jara pointed out that the mayor worked as a lawyer for companies owned by Polaris World founder, Facundo Armero, in whose favour two million square metres of land in the municipaltiy had been re-assigned.

For his part, the mayor of Torre Pacheco expressed his trust in "the impartiality of the Law," but questioned the the way the search and document seizure was undertaken last Tuesday. "One of the principles of penal law is that the person under investigation has the right to know why, and we don't yet know why we're being investigated. We also don't understand the indiscriminate request for information, which does not seem to correspond to any case in particular," said mayor García. The judiciary is investigating the truth of allegations that council officers committed a number of offences including influence trafficking, prevarication, and bribery related to alleged preferential treatment shown towards certain local construction and promotion companies based on a complaint filed by a private individual.

Polaris World in the spotlight
Several of the documents seized relate to construction empresario, Facudo Armero, the founder of Polaris World and for whom Daniel García worked as a lawyer before being elected mayor.

"My relationship with Facundo Armero is now like any other that may exist between a mayor and a construction company boss," explained Daniel García. "It is true that I provided legal services before entering the Town Hall, but my professional relationship with him was sporadic, like any other client, although, because the legal process is slow, some of the cases I was working on for him were not resolved until after I became mayor." The mayor also refuted claims that dossiers relating to Polaris World were given any kind of special treatment: "They were all resolved according to the law and the sanctions imposed have been paid."

Furthermore, García added that "I feel like I'm being treated like a 21st century Al Capone." The mayor estimates that, in total, nearly 150 dossiers have been confiscated, and insists that the priority for the council's legal department will be "to ensure that the documents are returned to the Town Hall as soon as possible." He also criticised the way the documents were seized, which, he believes, may invalidate the investigation.