The two courts in Barcelona that are investigating the management of Ada Colau have activated the investigation and have summoned the mayoress herself, two councilors and an auditor to testify in the coming days. The objective is to promote these processes so as not to coincide with the electoral campaign on May 28. Another issue is whether the respective magistrates will decide before that date whether to go ahead with the case or archive it, considering that there are no indications of a crime.
Colau will have to testify as accused of coercion and prevarication next Monday, March 13, as a result of the complaint filed against her and the councilor for Housing, Lucía Martín, and the Sants district, Marc Serra, the Vauras fund Investment SL, owner since 2019 of Bloc Llavors, located in Poble Sec, which became a symbol of the struggle for access to housing. The two councilors will be questioned by the head of the Court of Instruction number 18 of Barcelona, Carmen Garcia, this Friday.
The complaint was not admitted for processing when it was presented in November 2020. Then, Judge Carmen García argued for its rejection that the Vauras fund “attributed crimes without rigor or precision & rdquor ;. The prosecution then shared this decision. However, months later, in April 2022, the Barcelona audience He turned around, admitted the complaint for processing and ordered that the mayoress and the two councilors be summoned to testify as defendants. Since then, the togada has carried out various procedures, including the request to the Barcelona City Council for files and documentation.
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The magistrates of the Court of Barcelona justified their decision to admit the complaint, but only for the crime of coercion and another of alleged administrative prevarication, “because they understand that, if the denounced facts are true, the conduct consisting of compelling illegitimately” to the company to “force it to give up” for real estate social rentals that it owns. To do this, they argued, the consistory allegedly used the threat of not granting the company building licenses or not “unblocking those that were already paralyzed” as an “intimidating mechanism”. Serra then explained that the complaint is “from a foreign capital fund that was looking for a speculative operation in Poble Sec”, recalling that it was inadmissible and that what they did was simply “apply housing legislation & rdquor ;.
The subsidies
The other ongoing criminal process in which Colau appears is being processed by Court of Instruction number 21 of Barcelona and it was initiated by the complaint filed by the Association for Transparency and Democratic Quality in which it denounced alleged irregularities in the subsidies granted by the Barcelona City Council to various related entities from 2016 to 2020. The judge archived the case in July 2022, but, later and as happened with the other case of the investment fund, the Barcelona Court reopened it and ordered that a series of proceedings be carried out, such as testimonial statements and others related to documents. In this sense, it is expected that on March 17 an auditor will be questioned. After the collection of the missing data, the judge must decide.